


Harry Potter and the (Vincent) Half-Blood Prince

by salazarinadress



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Flying Motorcycles, Getting Together, Good Slytherins, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Invasion of Privacy, Kissing on a motorbike, M/M, References to Illness, Secret Snarry Swap 2020, Snarky Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27864837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarinadress/pseuds/salazarinadress
Summary: Harry designs and builds custom flying motorcycles with his best mate Ron and their old Slytherin rival Millicent Bulstrode, and he reckons that's enough for him. He doesn't need all the drama of coming out of the closet, and is happy to live a quiet, solitary life - but when a commission comes in from his snarky old potions professor, he discovers that there's more to Severus Snape than he ever thought possible. And more to himself, as well.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 66
Kudos: 236
Collections: Secret Snarry Swap20





	Harry Potter and the (Vincent) Half-Blood Prince

**Author's Note:**

> I think I kept more to the spirit of the prompt than the word of it, or maybe the other way round? Tried for humour, snark and sneak but y’all can be the judge of how far I missed. XD Thanks to my beta S who pointed out the horrifying plot flaws, even though my planned 20k words ended up being twice that. T-T
> 
> Prompt: No. 66 from **suitesamba** : Harry has gone into business making and selling flying motorcycles and Severus comes in for a test drive. Harry really needs to sell some bikes and turns on the charm to get Severus to buy one.

-*-  


_Love Comes Quietly - Robert Creeley  
_ _Love comes quietly,_  
_finally, drops_  
_about me, on me,_  
_in the old ways._  
_What did I know_  
_thinking myself_  
_able to go_  
_alone all the way._  


-*-

“Mmh?” Harry said loudly in response to a knock at his office door - one with a particular flavour of obnoxious confidence he attributed to Ron Weasley. He didn’t bother looking up as the door squeaked open.  


“Beer?”  


Harry frowned down at the drawing he had just finished, white pencil gripped tight in his fingers. He itched to crumple it up. “What do you think?” he asked instead, lifting a corner to tilt the drawing pad towards Ron, who was standing in the doorway with a beer bottle in each hand, dripping water from the ice bucket onto the worn concrete floor.  


Ron gave it a look, scrunched up his nose. “Bit overkill, innit?” He wiggled a bottle in Harry’s direction.  


Harry accepted the beer and was glad for the cool glass against his palm. It was turning into one of those horrible hot Septembers, the kind he was sure all the kids at Hogwarts would be complaining about - nothing but rain all through the holidays, then three days after the start of term it turned glorious. Perfect beach weather, and they were all stuck in classrooms.  


“You know what else is overkill?” Harry huffed, leaning back in his chair and stretching his stiff arms overhead, then jabbed the paper with an annoyed finger. “Heathcote Barbary is what.”  


Heathcote “Call Me Cottie” Barbary. Rhythm guitarist for the Weird Sisters, over-extravagant idiot and extremely well-paying new client of Harry’s customs shop. One who’d hopefully raise his profile a bit.  


Harry popped off the bottletop against the side of his desk, making a fresh mark to join thousands of its brethren. The edge looked like it’d been chewed on by pixies, but the clients never saw Harry’s real office anyway. He had another room out front, all stylish gunmetal and sleek surfaces without a single scratch. Plush chairs made of leather that always made him sweat when he sat in them for too long, and sketches of his previous works carefully arranged in artful disarray along the walls.  


Ron stepped closer, took a swig of his beer and grimaced down at the monstrosity that lay between them. “He knows the bikes fly on their own, right? Like… he requested that?”  


Of course Heathcote had requested it. Harry wasn’t in the business of putting full-size foldaway bat wings on bikes for funsies. It was just so… _tacky._  


Wings! On a flying motorcycle.  


Harry shrugged, trying his best to appear unbothered, but the whole thing went against his heart and his design principles: simplicity, elegance and personality. This thing had so much of the last, without any of the other two, that it looped back round to being a characterless toy.  


Bat wings as a motif, he could understand. An insignia, perhaps; or the pattern of veins under the surface of a thin, delicate membrane engraved onto the gas tank. He could think of a million tasteful ways of incorporating wings into the design - it was his job, the foundation of his career to think up that stuff - but did Cottie want tasteful?  


No. He wanted extravagant and eye-catching in the worst possible sense. Not that Harry was in much of a position to turn him down. They were speeding towards Winter now - out of season for buying motorcycles - so every client was precious as firewhiskey on a Friday afternoon. He could afford to be fussy again come Spring, but until then he was taking every client request that came across his desk.  


Harry took several long gulps of beer, sensed he’d need it to get through the rest of the afternoon, then sat back with a sigh. “It suits him, all this _Big Personality stuff_. He’s got stage presence,” he told Ron, and twisted the drawing back around to face himself. He could very easily imagine Heathcote sitting on this bike. “Except he keeps it on everywhere he goes, probably to cover up for the fact there’s nothing else to him. Just like this bike. Take away the scaled-to-size bat wings and the glow in the dark go-faster stripe, and it’s just a one-stroke Velocette.”  


Ron grinned down at him. “There’s you and your psycho-analysing again. Thought I told you to lay off the Freud.”  


“It’s not Freud, it’s common sense,” Harry retorted, putting on an air of dignity as he inwardly cursed Hermione for teaching Ron things that wizards had no business knowing. “And the clients like it. Makes them feel understood inside, when they get a design that represents them so well.”  


“Yes, you’re very smart,” Ron confirmed in a suspiciously solemn manner. He leaned on the table with one hand and swigged his beer. A mischievous smile crept over his face. He pointed the bottle at Harry. “I just can’t wait for you to balls it up. Sooner or later, you’re going to meet a client who doesn’t appreciate all your snooping.”  


Harry smirked. “They’d have to find out about it first, wouldn’t they?”  


“Like I said: can’t wait.”  


Harry kicked him in the shin. “Come off it. I do my job perfectly well, and you... Well, you must do something ‘round here, or I wouldn’t be paying you, would I? Speaking of…” he picked up his wand and cast a copying charm on the design. “This is all approved, so why don’t you go grab a jumbo bag of biscuits with the Big M and work out how to make it pass regs.”  


Ron took the paper, his face blanching - and not only from the difficulty of making a bike with a six foot wingspan fly steady in any but the calmest of winds. He looked imploringly at Harry, only half pretending at fear. “She scares me,” he whispered.  


Harry smiled in return, popped his feet onto his desk and saluted Ron with his beer bottle. “Mmh, I’ll tell you what - when you learn to fabricate better than a fizzwillow in a thunderstorm, we can fire her.”  


-*-  


Harry plastered on Customer Smile 3 - the slightly wheedling one - and rounded the bike. Beautiful machine, and he wasn’t thinking that just because he’d designed it. He hated plenty of the things he’d made over the years. George’s Banana Bike especially… How anyone could have a single poor word to say about this particular project was quite beyond him however.  


Dami Pustvial was doing her utmost best to show him. She was someone important in the Wizengamot apparently, and very much aware of how badly Ron needed this to be perfect. Or rather, how badly his wife did, which extended to him by virtue of his deep and unfailing devotion to her needs as the possible future Minister of Magic. Including but not limited to political bribes.  


Dami was the sort to wear matching twill jackets and trousers in varying shades of grey, with bouncy chiffon shirts and her hair in a bun so tight it pulled her eyebrows up into an expression of constant surprised disapproval. She kept her glasses tied around her neck with a string of green beads, except when she was staring down her nose through them. Harry could easily imagine her riding the stick up her arse along the corridors of the Ministry, the low heels of her shoes barely click-clacking over dark floor tiles and clipboard in hand, like a skinny, uptight Umbridge. All in all, she was a difficult woman to impress.  


There could hardly be anyone on the planet so obviously unsuited to this motorcycle than her - but this was the result of their consultation and so it could only be perfect. It was perfect, even if she didn’t know it yet.  


It wasn’t sleek, exactly, but it had the classic ‘60s style Harry loved. The Norton Dominator, Model 99. He’d sourced the frame from a friend of a friend and kept most of the parts original. The colour was beautiful: custom, the result of three sittings with the client, one of which had nearly come to a hexing on Harry’s part. He called it “Pearlescent Melancholy”, and she called it “Not As Bad As The Others”.  


The fuel cap was engraved with an image her eldest son had drawn, one of the last things he made before meeting a tragic death at work the following week. Four hands, representing Dami and her three children, reaching together to form a pattern like flower petals. She stopped mid-complaint as her eyes fell on it - a last minute addition on Harry’s part, a slight gamble, but he could already tell it was paying off. He softened his expression to something that almost felt genuine: Soft Smile 6.  


Unable to help herself, Dami reached out to touch the engraved design, and her lips thinned into a harsh line as she fought back sudden tears. Harry didn’t look away.  


When she gathered herself enough to look up, Harry was careful to keep his posture open so that he’d appear honest and innocent. “Your daughter sent it over,” he explained quietly, smothering a twinge of guilt at the surge of pleasure for being right yet again. He was bloody good at his job. “This bike would have been for Daniel, yeah? I wanted you to know that he’s there... That he’ll always be right there with you.”  


Sometimes it was just too easy. Apart from the bit where he had to look them in the eye, of course. She nodded tightly, eyes brimming again as she walked a fresh loop of the bike. She had no more complaints.  


Once she was all paid up, promised a careful delivery and sent on her way, Ron popped into the workshop from the back office with Millicent on his heels and a massive grin on his face.  


“I don’t know how you do it, I really don’t,” he said, hopping up to sit on a stack of old tyres. It wobbled perilously under his weight, but he barely seemed to notice. He held out an upturned palm and wriggled his fingers in a vaguely disturbing way. “Like putty in your hands.”  


“If only they were all that easy,” Harry replied tiredly. He wandered over to the workshop fridge to see what Molly had sent them for lunch today.  


“You call her easy?” Ron exclaimed. “Easy as getting a bloody hippogriff out of your chicken coop.”  


Huh. Tuna sandwiches. Third time in a fortnight. “Would you give your mother a call?” Harry said over his shoulder. “You must’ve done something to piss her off, not that I mind.”  


Ron groaned. “Please tell me there’s no mayo.”  


Harry held up the foil-wrapped sandwiches in response. “With tuna. What’d you do this time?”  


Millicent answered for him, taking the sandwiches from Harry’s grip with a raised eyebrow. “He hasn’t been for Sunday lunch three weeks in a row now,” she said disapprovingly.  


She looked pretty much as she had at school. With a wide face and stubby nose, she was hardly the fairest member of the fairer sex, but she was more muscular than Harry and Ron put together, which made her far cooler than them both. Not that either of them was very cool to start with.  


In the ways that mattered though, she wasn’t anywhere near the same person who’d gleefully taken part in Umbridge’s inquisitorial squad all those years ago.  


“Who told you that?” Ron accused, barely catching the sandwich she chucked at him in his outrage.  


“Arthur did,” she said. “I’ve been helping out with the Anglia on weekends. Which you’d know, if you came to lunch like you’re supposed to.”  


“Came to- You can’t go to lunch at my mum’s house!” Ron turned to Harry, squealing. “Mate, tell her she can’t go to lunch at the Burrow.”  


Harry stepped back, hands in the air, and shook his head. “Nmm-mm mmmpf.” The mouthful of sandwich he’d just bitten off was a good excuse not to get involved. He’d suffered through enough Weasley gossip and family politics for about seven lifetimes, thank you.  


Millicent’s mouth twitched in a triumphant half-smile, and she leaned over her worktable to eat, dropping crumbs over their chalk sketches from earlier this morning. She pointed along the outer edge of the doodled bat wing. “I can do this,” she said, spitting more crumbs over the surface. “Punch a few holes here, here, here. Pop in some chained H-spheres, put two more like… here I guess, to carry the momentum.”  


Harry scowled, half at the gross mess and half at the suggestion. It was likely the only thing that would make the wings work, but he’d already gotten the design signed off by the client, and Cottie wasn’t someone he wanted to interact with more than necessary. Celebrities gave him headaches even faster than ordinary people did. “How flat can we make them?”  


“How flat?” Millicent asked, raising her eyebrows and giving Harry a good view of the mushed-up tuna and white bread on her tongue. “How _flat_ can we make the _spheres_?”  


In a moment of betrayal, Ron burst out laughing. Harry sent a quick hex at the bottom tyre of the stack, sending his friend tumbling to the floor with a surprised shout. “Alright, fine. How big are we talking?”  


Millicent shrugged, turning her head to the side with an unflattering thoughtful pout. “Dunno, a few mil - maybe ten, twelve?”  


Not that bad, then. “Okay,” he sighed. “Get me a list of the most offensive colours we can order them in, and I’ll firecall him tomorrow morning.”  


“Oy, mate!”  


Harry turned just in time to get hit in the face with something flat and flappy. He tore it away, preparing another jinx for Ron, but the strategic bastard had slipped through the front office door. The one room Harry tried not to damage, even when he was in a mood - unofficially known as The Safe Zone.  


“What’s that?” Millicent asked around another mouthful of sandwich, drawing Harry’s attention to the letter in his hand.  


“Owl just arrived!” Ron shouted through the door. “And check out that handwriting, gave me the bloody shivers.”  


_Potter and co,  
_ _Winguardians’ Wizarding Wheels  
_ _Unit 12A Derry Industrial  
_ _Plodfort._  


It made Harry shiver too, though Millicent reacted with only mild surprise as she craned her neck to see. There was no question as to the sender’s identity - they’d all received their share of scathing commentary on essays and exam papers, enough to recognise this spiky scrawl.  


“What d’you reckon he wants?” Ron shouted.  


Harry flipped the letter over to look at the back. There was no return address, not that he needed or expected one. He ran a hand through his hair. “If I had to guess, Ron,” he called back, suddenly feeling quite tired. “I’d say he probably wants a flying motorbike.”  


-*-  


Harry paced in his office for half the morning before taking his restlessness out to the workshop, where he used it to annoy Ron and Millicent instead. He knew he was getting underfoot, but he just couldn’t rest knowing that Snape would be here in less than four hours.  


“Bloody hell Harry, go for a walk or something!” Ron growled, pushing him away from the dismantled engine lying in bits over the workshop floor - single cylinder, 349cc from a Viper, retro but behind the times even on its initial release. Ron then cast a protego between them, and the spell bulged out, forcing Harry outside.  


He stumbled out the door onto the tarmac lot outside, and contemplated hexing his friend for the bother. Then again, Ron was actually working for once so best not distract him with a duel.  


A muggle vehicle drove past on the little road leading deeper into the industrial estate, and Harry froze out of habit but the driver didn’t so much as glance his way thanks to the wards. He brushed off his trousers and walked towards the now deserted road. Then he turned back, trying to see the front of the shop as a new customer might - as Snape would. The building was low-roofed, with wide garage doors and a cleanly painted front. The sign above the front office window morphed occasionally from one design to another, showing off some of his past projects in stylised form.  


They had a few bikes on display out front, protected against the weather and thieves by charms and wards respectively. Parked in a row up the far end were the staff vehicles.  


Ron drove the most gorgeous ‘72 Triumph Spitfire - a mark 4 in inca yellow, eye catching in both form and colour. Sexy car, though the soft-top leaked like nobody’s business no matter what charms they tried. The dash and upholstery had been affectionately dubbed “Potter Originals”, meaning he designed them before he knew what he was doing. Ron didn’t seem to mind.  


Millicent - rather hilariously, in Harry’s opinion - squeezed herself daily into an Austin-Morris Mini City she was in the process of restoring. She’d kidnapped it from a muggle scrapyard last year and solicited Harry’s help in getting it legally documented and - barely - road safe, and in doing so she’d proven herself competent enough to earn a full-time gig at the shop. The red paint had gone orange with age, more prominently along the left side of the car, and it was flaking off in places. She loved the thing regardless. Harry didn’t share the sentiment, but then he was the only one who actually owned a bike.  


Well, he owned several bikes. And a few parts. A few sheds-full of parts, that was. And some projects he’d not got round to fixing yet. Maybe ten. Probably closer to thirty... It wasn’t a problem, no matter what his friends said.  


He had visions for them all but no time to realise them. Not when he had client work to do, bills to pay and staff to keep from revolting. Life got in the way of life.  


He walked round the side of the shop, passing through a notice-me-not charm on the alley leading back to their storage yard. Ron called it the junkyard, but none of it was junk. Not to Harry.  


He loved coming back here whenever he had a spare moment - his collection inspired him. He could forget the shop, the admin, the deadlines and client idiosyncrasies. He could forget sales targets and the monthly profit trajectory that always looked so good in May, but depressed and stressed him by November. Being here transported him way back to that first year, scrambling for clients in a mad and exciting whirlwind of parts, fit issues and finishing disasters. Ron had almost pulled out twice for fear of not making a stable enough income to support his soon-to-be-born daughter. It was a wonder they’d got the shop off the ground at all.  


He wandered among his bikes for a while, noting and remembering little details about them all. The ‘64 Thunderbird 6T with its bathtub body, not as exciting-looking as the Bonneville - of which he owned two, or six counting the ones he could build entirely from parts - or the earlier ‘52 model he had in bits somewhere. The 6T was one of his favourites, regardless. It was a late model, made only a few years before the end of the line after they switched to unit construction.  


He almost tripped over a partially disassembled engine, steadying himself against a metal shelf. His fingers brushed briefly over one of the dusty headlamps that sat with its friends from various models and years. He kept going, and further back he went, the more disordered the storage became. His ‘58 TR6/B stood with two flat, cracked-dry tyres under the weight of a worktable he’d balanced on it at one end. The bike’s high pipe, along with a few from other models, lay in a pile on the scratched wooden surface, along with a diverse selection of dusty rubber seals.  


He kept exploring until he physically couldn’t reach any further without moving things around, and then sat heavily on the seat of a half-stripped Rickman to think. The shelves felt oppressive back here, tall and dark, covered in grey dust that got all over his clothes.  


What in the world was Snape thinking, getting a bike from Winguardian of all places?  


As much as Harry took pride in his work, having scraped his way to consideration on par with the big players like BB Customs and Accio Style, he was hardly the world’s number one customs shop. He had yet to be offered a multi-page feature in _Magical Motor Madness Monthly_ , and his first was likely to be the terrible contraption he was making for Heathcote Barbary, and…  


Well, this was Snape. Even in a world where Harry was number 1, his designs on the covers of every motoring magazine in the universe, he couldn’t imagine the man offering himself up willingly as a client.  


Particularly when it came to Harry’s quite personal methods of researching his clients. No one but his friends knew exactly how far he went, but it was easy enough to work out from the reviews and occasional news stories.  


Maybe Snape was coming to take the piss? To make a big show of looking around, judging everything, then leave with some comment about substandard work and Harry’s perceived wish for continued and wholly undeserved fame. That seemed the most likely scenario.  


Harry picked up a chrome-plated speedometer and tapped it to set the dial spinning with his thoughts.  


_Click click click click click_  


What if Snape was serious? What would Harry do, if Severus GrumpMaster Snape really honestly wanted a bike designed by him?  


_Click click click click click click click_  


He sure as hell couldn’t afford to turn down any work at this time of year, he knew that much. And as a project it was very featurable - Harry Potter and Severus Snape! What a story. Two war heroes, one light and one… uh, slightly less light. It was guaranteed front cover material, surely. That’d really push them forwards ahead of next Summer, and for a much more tasteful design than Heathcote Barbary’s monstrosity.  


_Click click click click click click click click click click_  


Damn. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that he seriously couldn’t afford to lose Snape as a client. This could be his next big break. Even if the man wasn’t serious at all, Harry would have to convince him.  


_Click click click click click_  


But how?  


_Click._  


Suddenly energised, he stalked back through the yard, plucking details to inspire as he went. He had to design his best custom yet. Maybe based on a classic wartime model? That’d certainly boost the story. He liked the side profile of the Matchless G3 for Snape, heavier towards the front but not in an overly aggressive way. It was poised, ready to go at a moment’s notice, but also restrained. Not as well known as the M20, but then Harry couldn’t stand those bulky military BSA bikes so that was definitely out. No elegance at all.  


“Alright mate?”  


He jumped, dragged from his thoughts, and realised that he was standing in the workshop again. “Mmh? Yeah, yeah, just…”  


Ron grinned. “Thinking?”  


“Mm,” Harry replied. He’d always wanted to do an all-silver bike, maybe now was the time? The contrast against Snape’s black robes would be awesome - in fact, a black bike might be counter-productive for the man, since it’d make his robes look grey by comparison. Yeah. Silver, maybe some green touches - tastefully done, though. Subtle.  


“Ground control to Major Potter? Hello?”  


He started again, turning to Ron, and then spotted the bat wings in progress on Millie’s work table. Dismay clawed at Harry’s lungs. “No no no, put those away. Merlin!” he said quickly, butting Ron aside and striding towards them. He couldn’t have those things lying out in the open when there was a client coming - Snape would think him a tasteless fool.  


He hefted one of the heavy wings into the air and loudly stowed it behind some sheet metal at the back of the workshop, but the other was clamped in place ready for welding so he cast an invisibility charm on it instead.  


Millie stepped out of the WC at that moment, and instantly finite’d the spell. “Talk about a health and safety issue. You want to trip on something and impale yourself?” She said crossly, checking over the wing as if Harry’s spell might have damaged it.  


“I need it gone for a couple hours,” Harry said, putting on his most commanding voice to cover the fear of Millie’s wrath as he recast the charm. The wing disappeared again. “Put some stickers on it or something.”  


“No you put some stickers on it,” Millie grumbled, not quite loudly enough to be taken as a serious response. Harry raised a warning eyebrow at her anyway, just to reiterate who was the boss and who was the lowly employee he could fire at any time. She returned a pointed, defiant look as she grabbed a grey plastic tarpaulin and threw it over the wing with a loud crinkling sound.  


Harry saw Ron smiling out the corner of his eye, and graciously decided to ignore it because he was making good progress on the engine. Harry swept past him into the front office.  


The photographs and illustrations formed a somewhat accurate timeline clockwise from the door, with a few redesigns and unrealised concepts added to up the quality of the earlier years. Harry slowed his steps, meandering towards the table in the middle of the room, then twirled the Big Boss chair around a couple of times before sitting in it. He fetched some paper and a pencil from the table’s hidden drawer.  


He didn’t draw a bike - he never began with the bike. Instead, he sketched out what details he could remember of Snape. The silhouette of his dark robes and oily hair, long rows of buttons and cuffs that hid his hands and neck. Black leather shoes with a low heel. The edges of a white shirt peeking out from his sleeves. The ever-present scowl and the hooked nose. His long-fingered hands. They’d be elegant if not for their crookedness - a sign of many broken fingers in his time.  


Harry drew the wand as well, or what he could remember of it. Plain, dark wood. Unknown length, materials and rigidity. The handle had some sort of decoration, didn’t it? Where Snape could feel the texture of it under his fingers, have the pattern imprinted on his palm for a few minutes after clutching it too hard in a duel - but not where it could easily be seen by others.  


Next, he made a mindmap of words, phrases and questions. _Double spy. Loved Lily. Albus?? Half blood Prince. Enemy of the Marauders. Dark mark. Slytherin - head of house. Snakes - design motif? Green & silver. Potions. Two wars. Survivor. Absolute git! Secrets -> loads of em. What does he do now? Potions books? Current bike -> 70s Yamaha I think?? (SR500/XT500?)_  


Harry sat back, flapping the bottom of his shirt to ward off the heat of the day, and surveyed his findings so far. Nothing bar the obvious popped out at him, and he was left feeling deeply dissatisfied. He turned his attention back to the pristine office walls. They were so clean and fake compared to his real office out back. Would it be better to do the consultation there? Would Snape react better to a more authentic Harry, or would that only fuel the flames of his condescension? Probably the latter.  


He cast tempus - still half an hour to go. He’d skipped out on lunch, but couldn’t feel hunger through the tight knot of nerves in his stomach.  


He wasn’t usually one to worry like this. Really, what was going on? He sighed.  


With no more ideas on physical prep, he turned his attention inwards. He had to make sure that Snape met a Harry Potter he liked - or at least one he could tolerate for short periods of time. What were things Snape hated in others? Except for everything… Tardiness. Stupidity. Lack of conviction. Laziness.  


Harry was none of those things, apart from maybe tardy, stupid and occasionally lazy. Loads of conviction though. On good days.  


This wasn’t helping. What were the things Snape liked in others, then? That was quite the impossible question. Harry tried to think of people who’d seemed to get on with him in the past. Dumbledore, for one. And Lily. No one else really, discounting professionally cordial colleagues and Death Eaters.  


Albus and Lily. Albus… and Lily… Well, there was always the eyes. Dumbledore had the whole seeing-into-your-heart twinkle thing going on, and then... you have your mother’s eyes. Hm. He could work with that.  


He took off his glasses and studied them, squinting. They were his Number 4 pair, masculine rectangular frames in textured silver for looking sensible yet artistic. Maybe they weren’t the right choice for Snape. He accio’d Number 3 instead, which were the closest he had to the round lenses of his childhood. Not that either of them needed a reminder, but bigger lenses with a thin frame would draw attention to his eyes. He’d take any advantage available.  


He smoothed down his unruly hair, checked for oil stains on his jeans and shirt, and contemplated rolling down his sleeves but thought better of it as he felt the horrible leather-chair-sweats coming on.  


Three minutes to go. This was it. He was ready and prepared for anything.  


-*-  


Harry was not prepared for this at all.  


Snape was the same as he remembered, mostly. Taller than him by a few inches, with moon-pale skin and midnight hair unaffected by the passing years. His dark eyes were shadowed under thin, angular eyebrows. His long fingers were half-covered by dark button-down sleeves, and a tall collar hid the silvery scar left by Nagini’s bite.  


But something was different, Harry could sense it even if he couldn’t put a finger on it right now. Much like Millicent - and everyone else Harry had become reacquainted with after the war - Snape was… yeah, just different somehow.  


His hair didn’t look so oily for starters, and in this light his dark irises held flecks of honey brown. He looked healthy and well-rested, and he sat without hunching or tensing up. Just a man, sitting in a chair.  


Just a man.  


“And this is the result of your famed talent for personal insight?” Snape said slowly, casting a critical and unimpressed eye over Harry’s notes.  


Harry forgot himself for a moment, caught by the way Snape’s entire expression - all of his expressions - centered so strangely around the subtle movements of his upper lip and the muscles at the corners of his nose. He’d always been like that, but it was strange to notice and see it up close a decade later.  


He blinked, recovering with an easy-going smile - always difficult putting that one on, but it was one of his more effective masks. “That’s just some playing around, remembering what I thought of you when I was a kid,” he explained. He leaned forward, pulling in Snape’s gaze and then leading it to the words _absolute git_ scrawled untidily on the mindmap. He switched to a coy smile, eyes slightly widened. “It’s rubbish, really. I’d like to know who you are now. Who you really are.”  


Merlin, he didn’t half talk a load of bollocks.  


Snape’s eyes narrowed at him, trying to work out his game. _Good luck with that_ , Harry thought. Even he wasn’t sure what he was playing at half the time. “It occurs to me that if you were capable of understanding then you might have done so by now.” Snape said, his brow drawn up in mock sorrow as he dropped the papers back onto the table.  


Harry rested his chin on his hand, settling into Cheeky Grin 1, a staple from his school years. “If I was intelligent enough, you mean?”  


“Among other characteristics, yes,” Snape answered, with unsurprising honesty. His voice was just how Harry remembered it. Slow and grating, yet melodious. There was a captivating, satisfying flow to it that tickled pleasantly down Harry’s spine.  


“And you don’t think me capable of capturing it?” Harry asked, tipping his head challengingly to the side. Snape followed the motion with his eyes. Intent. “Capturing you, I mean.”  


Snape raised a brow and gave him a frank look. “I hope that you’ll take no offence at my saying so, however if my character were to be understood by one such as yourself then I would on that day have no choice but to perish from embarrassment and shame at the newfound shallowness of my disposition.”  


“That’s a lot of words to say you don’t think there much going on up here,” Harry responded calmly, tapping a finger against his temple. “Do you honestly think I’m that superficial?”  


“Yes,” Snape answered easily. At least it was just the one word, this time. He stood up, pulling his gaze away from Harry’s face for the first time in minutes and making Harry realise how long they’d been holding eye contact. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”  


Snape started to leave, and Harry’s heart leapt in surprise. No. Damn, what had he done so wrong all of a sudden? People usually loved his cheekiness.  


“Wait!” he called out - and Snape stopped. Not having expected this, Harry’s brain scrambled to catch up with his mouth. “Let me draw something, at least. Give me three weeks and then we’ll see where we are.”  


Three weeks? He couldn’t come up with a design for Snape in just three weeks! And he had his hands full with other projects already.  


Snape considered, or at least appeared to. From the side his nose was even more appallingly proportioned than it seemed head on. Harry thought for a wild second that he should put a big nose on the front of Snape’s bike, draped down over the front wheel like the back-end of one of those awful Victory Visions. He blinked that horrible image away quickly.  


“What would it entail?” Snape asked carefully, looking sideways at Harry. He cast a great silhouette, something the designer in Harry could appreciate even as he stumbled for words.  


“Chat.” Harry answered, then realised it wasn’t the full sentence he’d been meaning to say. He struggled to get Customer Smile 2 to stick but the corner of his mouth gave him away with a twitch. “Meet me for a chat, twice a week for the next three weeks.”  


“A chat?” Snape’s frown deepened.  


“Mm,” Harry agreed. “It’s like… when two people - friends usually - sit down and casually talk about, you know. Stuff. Over coffee?”  


_Come on, come on, come on._  


Snape breathed in deep and raised a hand to his forehead. He pressed his thumb and forefinger outwards over his eyebrows, then back in across his closed eyelids to finally rest pinching the bridge of his nose. Harry held his breath as Snape held that pose, shoulders tense, before finally releasing it. “Whiskey,” he said, cracking his eyes open again. “At the Fudge Bonnet. Wednesdays at seven and Saturdays at four.”  


Harry opened his mouth to ask what day it was now - he worked all seven so it never felt important to keep track - but thought it best not to give Snape any more reason to doubt his intelligence. “Great,” he said instead, grinning. “Fudge Bonnet. Wednesdays and Saturdays. See you then.”  


Snape nodded, his mouth a thin line of dissatisfaction despite the fact that he was the one to suggest it, and then he apparated out.  


At the loud popping sound, Ron came out of hiding and put his head through the door. “Guessing from that smile you convinced him to get a bike somewhere else?” he said.  


Harry raised a surprised hand to his cheek, forcing his cheek muscles to relax. “What? No, he- What day is it today? And have you ever heard of the Fudge Bonnet?”  


-*-  


The worst thing about the coming of Autumn, in Harry’s opinion, was the creeping darkness that consumed more and more of the morning. It wasn’t yet dark at seven when he landed outside the office, but it wasn’t bright enough to make him feel awake and ready to go about his day either. Once it got too dark, the temptation to sleep longer and apparate instead of freezing his arse off on a bike would take over, and then the winter blues would follow until the first crisp days of Spring.  


Harry was always the first in, since he liked to make use of the quiet hours before all the chatter and clatter, shouts, questions, hammering and sparks. Without the clients, and without Ron and Millicent. Just the _tap-sk tap-sk tap-sk_ of his shoes as he walked over smooth concrete, the click and hum of the air vents coming on and the _tiktiktik-buzzzzzzz_ of the fluorescent lamp flickering to life overhead.  


Harry unlocked the door to the back office, ignoring the squeaking hinge as always, despite the fact that there were at least six different types of oil within easy reach to fix it.  


His notes on Snape lay on the table, waiting. He never left a blank sheet to start a day on if he could help it, or he’d end up spending the first hour staring at it with nothing to get him going. There was a third piece, the notes he’d written after the first consultation. Well, more a conversation really, and barely even that:  


_Merlin he’s a condescending arsehole. Arse-end nose?? Fudge Bonnet. Sexy voice._  


Hardly groundbreaking insights. Still, he had plenty of other projects to be getting on with in the meantime. He pulled another batch of papers towards himself - a commission for a muggleborn who’d been a couple years below him at Hogwarts. Ollie. A nice, inoffensive guy who was doing a truly awful job at reinventing himself after a breakup. Harry was drawing the bike, but he had very little will to make the thing. It was taking up thinking space in his head when he had more important things going on, and what Ollie really needed was a good therapist and an extra large tub of ice cream.  


Maybe it was thoughts of frozen desserts that made him churn out this cream enamel Manx. He doodled some late-Celtic twirls along the bottom of the fuel tank in the lightest blue he could manage without making them invisible, an homage to Ollie’s love for ancient Welsh legends. Harry supposed those old stories were probably based on real events, but even for a wizard it was hard to imagine figures like Merlin and Taliesin being real people.  


He checked through his diary for the day - he’d promised himself a chunk of the afternoon for catching up on invoices and tax stuff, and he was consulting on a custom paint job this morning, but the rest of the day was free for drawing, managing and helping out in the workshop. A pretty good- he checked the page header… _Monday_. A pretty good Monday.  


Millicent got in at nine on the dot and Ron began his customary stumbling about at closer to ten, banging things and cursing about the state he left the work in last night.  


In the meantime, Harry stopped pretending that he could think about anything but Snape. He kept staring at his useless notes, pen poised as if to add something but his mind was blank. He listed bikes he thought would be good, which was a meaningless endeavour - he hated every idea, and nothing felt right. He needed an in. An informant who was closer to the subject than he was.  


He looked up sharply at the sound of a misfiring, sputtering engine pulling up outside the building, and then grinned. He recognised the sound.  


“That’ll be Hagrid!” Ron called, confirming Harry’s thought.  


“Alrigh’ Ron?” Hagrid’s booming voice carried easily through the workshop to Harry’s office a minute later, and Harry rose quickly to join his friends outside. The half-giant stooped through the garage door, then grinned as their eyes met.  


There were very few things Harry loved more than the genuine, unreserved joy his presence elicited in Hagrid. He stepped into an all-encompassing hug, taking in the smell of Rubeus’ old coat: animals and engine fumes. It was earthy and rugged and totally unique. He couldn’t help but smile.  


“I’d ask what you’re doing here, but I think we all heard it,” Harry said as they pulled apart. “Repairs?”  


Hagrid nodded sheepishly, his expressive eyebrows showing regret. “Though’ I could sort it meself but you know wha’ I’m like!” He held up his giant hands, far too big for fiddly work, yet surprisingly skillful. Those hands had taught Harry the first half of everything he knew about bikes.  


Harry hit Hagrid’s arm as hard as he could, a gesture equivalent to a pat on anyone else. “That’s what you have me for!”  


Ron kicked him lightly in the foot.  


“And what I obviously mean is, that’s what I have Ron for!” Harry corrected. “You in a rush?”  


Hagrid patted along his coat - how he could wear a coat in this heat was beyond Harry - and then pulled out a normal-sized pocket watch, which looked like a prop for a dollhouse in his fingers. He fumbled it open and squinted at its face. “‘fraid so Harry. Don’ suppose you coul’ pop me home, I got first years in an hour.”  


Harry smiled. “Of course, let me just grab a jacket and I’ll get you back to Hogwarts.”  


Apparating with a giant was no easy feat, but Harry was well practiced by now and so they appeared only slightly off course, at the edge of the forbidden forest. Hagrid’s hut sat just up the hill from them. “I’ll walk you,” Harry said. “I could do with a change of scenery and some inspiration.”  


The air was cool and fresh, a nice change from the stuffy workshop, and sunlight warmed his back as they picked their way up towards the hut. It was nostalgic returning to Hogwarts, but enough time had passed now that the feeling was only a dull, sunken sting.  


He tried to think of a roundabout way of bringing up the topic of Snape, then realised it wouldn’t really matter with Hagrid. “I’m designing a bike for Snape,” he said.  


Hagrid’s eyebrows rose and he patted his beard in surprise. “Really? Didn’ see tha’ one coming. How is he? Heard his book sells well enough.”  


Harry shrugged, hiding his disappointment that Hagrid wasn’t any more up to date than himself. Then again, he could hardly imagine Snape going round the hut for afternoon tea. “He seemed okay. Healthy. Does he visit?”  


Hagrid laughed. “A healthy looking Sev’rus! Tha’s something I’d like to see, he’s looked on the verge o’ death every second I’ve known ‘im.”  


“You haven’t seen him in a while then?” Harry asked. He still had to crane his neck to look up at Hagrid’s face, even as an adult. It made him almost feel like a student again - but then his eyes fell on a few robed figures running about in the distance, and he could hardly imagine being that small.  


“Not since the war, really,” Hagrid sighed. “He pops roun’ to see Poppy of’n enough, though.”  


Poppy? Oh, Madam Pomfrey. “He still makes potions for the infirmary, then?” Harry asked.  


Hagrid nodded, then stopped walking with a little frown. “Jus’ occurred to me ‘e’s a private man, is our Sev’rus. Wouldn’ appreciate your digging.” He gave Harry a pointed look here, but if there was one thing Harry knew about Hagrid, it was his incredible inability to not spill any and all beans entrusted to him. So Harry just looked back at him. “Y’see he’s always been a private boy, since he came to Hogwarts tha’ first year. Poppy had a sof’ spot, took care of’im, ‘fore all tha’ nasty business with the Death Eaters, and they wouldn’t wan’ the likes o’ you or me poking the coals o’ the few friendships ‘e’s managed to hold onter.”  


Harry smiled, starting to walk again. “I was only asking if he brews potions for Madam Pomfrey,” he said. “Not his whole life story.”  


“Oh!” Hagrid exclaimed, realising that he’d said too much - again. “Well, that ‘e does.”  


As they neared the hut, a distant barking grew louder and Harry had about half a second to put up a barrier before the slobber machine that was Fang’s son bounded into view. Spit splattered in an arc against Harry’s shield and he took a hasty step backwards.  


“Tooth, stop tha’,” Hagrid said, as the dog bounced himself onto the spell again, leaving a fresh splodge where his jowls slapped against the invisible barrier. It dripped thickly onto the grass while he was dragged back. “Tooth, you lil maniac you, wha’ you been up to you lil rascal, I’ll find ou’ yes I will.”  


Harry backed away a little more. He did love animals, and he missed Fang as much as anyone, but he was only willing to love this particular specimen while wearing heavy duty boots and self-cleaning overalls. “Maybe I’ll have a wander about, for old times sake,” he said to Hagrid.  


The giant looked up from fussing Tooth. “You’ll prob’ly want’a leave it for the weekend,” he said, straightening. Tooth continued to shower his feet with mouth slime. “First week o’ term. She’s a bit swamped wi’ all the Weasley’s Wheezes accidents, all beds full I heard.”  


Harry put on his most innocent look. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “I was just going to take a walk about, maybe impress a few kids on their way to lessons.”  


Hagrid tilted his head knowingly. “I may no’ be the brightest crup in the litter Harry, but I known you since you was this high.” He gestured with a hand to where Harry estimated the top of his head was when he was fifteen. “And I know the trick for tellin’ when yer looking for trouble.”  


Harry grinned. “Yeah?”  


Hagrid nodded. “Yeah. Y’see, I look at you, and I look for the sign.”  


“And what’s that?” Harry asked. He had a feeling he knew already.  


“Yer breathin’.”  


Harry burst out laughing. “You’re… you’re not wrong,” he replied. “I’ll come back for a proper snoop when your bike’s done then. You in a rush for it? We’re a bit bogged and might not get round to it until the weekend.”  


Hagrid patted Harry on the back amicably, sending him stumbling three steps forward. “O’course, not t’a worry. Anyway, I best go find Buckbeak ‘fore this class starts.”  


Harry saw that a small gaggle of students had begun congregating a distance away, watching and pointing him out to each other. At least he was wearing clean clothes today. He turned away from them. “Right. I’ve got things to do anyway, see you maybe Sunday - oh.” He pretended to have just thought of something, catching Hagrid halfway to stepping away. “Don’t suppose you have any suggestions for the design, do you?”  


“Yer a talented lad, m’sure any man woul’ be pleased with whatever you make,” Hagrid assured him, and started walking towards the students. Then he turned and called over his shoulder, “Jus’ maybe lay off the snakes! He can’ stand ‘em!”  


Harry blinked. Snakes? Snape didn’t like snakes?  


-*-  


By Wednesday, Harry was no closer to inspiration than he had been before, and the bat wings were still giving Ron and Millie trouble. They’d sticking-charm’d them onto another Velocette just to check proportions while Heathcote’s bike was still in bits. Trying to take off with them attached was a disaster, and Harry had been dragged away from his desk to consult.  


“They’ll need to be folded nearly flat against the sides,” Ron said an hour later, pulling the wings into shape with a grunt from his position on the bike. “And how tall is this guy, again?” He moved his knee against the left wing’s base uncomfortably.  


Harry shrugged. “Five seven, five eight?” He answered vaguely. “He has _normal sized_ legs.”  


Ron moved back on the saddle a bit, still frowning. “So long as no actual humans want to ride it, I guess he’ll be fine.”  


“Who would want to?” Harry asked, grinning. He helped fold one of the wings flat against the side of the bike, then stood back to appraise it. “Looks much better like that, maybe this is the standard and we only let them unfold when the bike’s invisible.”  


Millicent walked out of the workshop towards them, the arms of her overalls tied around her waist in the heat of the day. She wiped her head with a forearm while holding her hand out in the familiar claw of mechanics, painters and parents of messy children. “How’s it going? I have the fender shaped up right, think we’re on schedule to get it all cleaned and painted Friday, wings pending.”  


“Getting there,” Harry answered, throwing her a rag for the dirty oil on her fingers. He cast tempus, and realised that they’d been tinkering with the thing for hours. He needed to go home and shower ahead of meeting Snape. “You get anywhere on finding out where this bloody pub is?”  


Millicent nodded, but her expression was concerned. She pulled a well-worn map from her back pocket, unfolding it to reveal a section of Lewisham. From her face, he’d been expecting it to show somewhere more like Knockturn Alley. She pointed out a red dot, just round the corner from a building outlined in the same ink. “Here’s probably safest for apparating,” she said. “It’s a wizarding establishment, and uh, I think you’d best go with a glamour or something.”  


Merlin, Harry wanted to find out more about Snape but if the man was involved in anything illegal, he really could do without knowing. “It’s not-?”  


“No,” Millicent said, understanding his drift. She glanced sideways at Ron, who was pretending not to listen in. “Nothing like that, but it’s not the type of place you’d wanna be seen either. I think.”  


Interesting. Harry looked at the map again to fix the coordinates in his mind, then gave her a nod. She folded and disappeared it, then stretched her thick arms forwards with a grimace. Her muscles bulged, and Ron frowned at them. “Don’t know about you two, but I’m done,” Millie groaned. “Gunna head off and grab a six pack on the way home, that cool?”  


Harry waved her off. Ron waited an entire twenty seconds before commenting. “See that? She’s gunna kill us one day, Harry,” he hissed. “She’s playing nice to get our guard down, and then she’s gunna grab both our throats in one hand and javelin us to the bloody moon.”  


“She’s slow,” Harry answered calmly as they watched her squeeze into her tiny car. “So all we need to do is stay apart and both hope she goes after the other.”  


Ron nodded thoughtfully. The mini’s overly powerful new engine revved loudly. “Seems like a good strategy. Especially since I have longer legs than you.”  


“I know stronger binding spells though,” Harry argued lightly. The car pulled away, took a left towards the countryside road and disappeared behind a wall. The roaring engine echoed loudly down the street.  


Ron shimmied backwards off the bike until he could put his feet on the ground again, then began pushing it towards the workshop. Harry followed alongside. “It’s not all about the binding, you know?” Ron explained. “I’ve got some absolutely belting disorientation charms in my arsenal - you won’t know what hit you until you come round a week later in Abergavenny, naked except for a traffic cone on your head.”  


-*-  


Harry usually locked up alone, but Ron hung around, fidgeting uselessly with an old gasket from the bin until the moment Harry began pulling the shutters down. “You having a sleepover?” Harry asked, teasing to cover his discomfort. This was new territory.  


Ron dropped the gasket and joined Harry at the door. “Are you, uh, sure? About Snape.”  


Harry lifted his eyebrows silently.  


“I know we need work,” Ron continued. “We always need work. I just mean… Maybe you should have some backup, is all.”  


“I’m sure your disorientation charms are really wonderful,” Harry said comfortingly, putting a hand on Ron’s shoulder with a sympathetic smile. “Really though, I don’t think he’s gunna hurt me. Why would he?”  


“Cos he’s a git,” Ron pointed out. “And so are you.”  


“Then we’re perfect company,” Harry replied. They both stepped back as the final lock clicked into place and the wards settled over the door. It was still bright outside but a chill was starting to grip the air.  


Ron wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You’re gunna get in a fight. Guaranteed.”  


“And I’ll use one of my many binding charms, cover him in Christmas decorations and send you a photograph,” Harry said, and began walking to his bike. Ron took a few long strides to catch up.  


“No offense mate, but Snape would have you in a duel no question,” Ron said.  


Harry spluttered at the betrayal. “I defeated Lord Voldemort, in case you hadn’t heard. Think I could take on my stinking old potions professor.”  


“Yeah, yeah, you’re really great,” Ron sighed, fetching his keys out of his pocket. His collection of souvenir keyrings clinked together. “But that was ages ago, and I bet he still, you know.” He made a few stabbing gestures in the air in a mock duel.  


“Wasn’t he more like…” Harry frowned, stepping out and putting his weight on his back foot as he raised his wand over his head like a scorpion’s tail. He waved it about in the same ridiculous manner as Ron. “With Lockhart, remember?”  


Ron laughed. “Yeah well, he’d win either way.” He took out his wand and practiced Snape’s duelling pose with a serious expression, like a child playing with a toy gun. He pointed it at Harry. “He probably does it all the time, and I haven’t seen you cast expelliarmus in like two years.”  


Now obligated, Harry began to cast but was a split second too late. When he blinked, he was standing on the other side of the car park, one of his sleeves rolled up and the other down, and something stuck in his hair. Ron waved to him from his place leaning casually against the boot of his Spitfire, both of their wands in his hand. Damn.  


Harry tried a wandless accio on the car, which obviously wouldn’t work but gave Ron enough of a jolt that he yelped, stumbling forwards in surprise.  


“I’ll be fine,” Harry assured him once he was back in arm’s reach. He held out a hand for his wand, and Ron reluctantly returned it. “If Snape wanted to hurt me, he wouldn’t openly invite me to a public place to do it, would he?”  


-*-  


Just over an hour later, showered and dressed in his smartest casual robes, Harry stood outside the Fudge Bonnet and reconsidered his last statement to Ron. Snape was trying to kill him with embarrassment.  


It looked a safe enough building - decorated just this side of gaudy, flirting with the line into tackiness - but it was the customers that worried him. As he approached the entrance, he spotted two men sharing a fag a little way off. One of them was wearing a lot of black leather belts, most of them in the wrong places. The other was more conservatively dressed, but they stood closer together than most wizards were comfortable with.  


Not that Harry was phobic of people like that. He was positive about the whole thing... He’d be a hypocrite not to be.  


He stepped aside to let a man out the door, and the guy looked Harry up and down in a definitely provocative way. Harry glanced away quickly, feeling a sudden hot flush rise up his throat.  


No, he wasn’t against people like that, or places like this. He… he was _supposed_ to be here, he supposed. Which was exactly why he’d avoided it. Avoided other people who might be like him. His business was definitely easier to run with the press on his side, so all potential sources of scandal were out of the question.  


He was expecting to be assaulted by loud thumping music as he entered, but there were only the ordinary pub sounds of chatter and clinking glass. He felt his blush rise again at the knowledge of his secret, incorrect assumption. Of course it was an ordinary pub, because these were ordinary people.  


As if the universe was really trying to disprove every thought that came into his head, on walking up to the bar he came face to face with himself. Or rather, a slightly younger, prettier version of himself. It was obviously a glamour, but that didn’t make it any less shocking. The man noticed his wide-eyed stare and turned to him with a growing smile. “Like what you see?” he asked, leaning a hand on his hip. His voice was lilting, almost musical, nothing like Harry’s own.  


He shook his head quickly, glad of his own glamour - though as he looked around, he realised it might not have been entirely necessary. He saw one other Harry, three Nevilles, two Lockharts and a Myron Wagtail among those who were probably here as themselves. He could have come without the disguise, and no one would have been the wiser.  


The fake Harry next to him waved for the barman, pointed a thumb back at Harry and stage-whispered, “Think he’s new.”  


The barman gave Harry an apologetic smile and asked what he’d like. Harry ordered a firewhiskey, and made a show of looking around for Snape to let them know he wasn’t alone. Snape was probably in disguise as well. Hopefully not as any of his former students. Merlin, and not as someone who got _with_ his former students either. The longer Harry stood here, the more uncomfortable he grew with the realisation that wizards of all orientations probably had sex with his face on.  


He found a quiet corner to stew in, and sipped his firewhiskey much more slowly that he usually would. After a few minutes, he realised that he should probably make himself obvious to Snape, and tapped about in his pockets until he found a random bolt in his coat. He had no idea what it was from, or when he’d picked it up, but it had probably been missing long enough that its owner no longer cared. He transfigured it into a little bike and placed it on the table in front of him.  


Seconds later, a fake Severus Snape slipped into the chair opposite him. It was a fake Snape, because it couldn’t possibly be the real one. The real Snape didn’t wear muggle shirts with three-quarter length sleeves, or tight trousers, and he didn’t tie his hair back, or… or any of whatever this was. Harry would never be instantly, achingly attracted to the real Snape.  


“Sorry, I’m waiting for someone,” Harry said, pulling his drink closer to himself as he put on a disarming but distant smile. The real one was going to arrive any moment now and hex them both.  


“Would you prefer sitting with yourself?” Snape said, his distinctive voice revealing that it was indeed the real one, and Harry swallowed his shock. “We could conceivably fill the table with Harry Potters, if it would make you more comfortable.”  


“Why would-?” Harry shook his head, remembering that he wasn’t here to pick fights. Or respond to the fights Snape was trying to pick. He plucked the bike off the table and transfigured it back, slipping the bolt into his coat pocket. Holy Merlin’s buckets, those were Snape’s real actual arms, bare for the entire world to see. It seemed wrong, somehow. Wait, he had to concentrate. Say something about all the other Harry Potters. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I think one of them tried to pick me up.”  


“You needn’t have turned him down for my sake, Potter,” Snape said lightly, sitting back in his chair. His long fingers played with the rim of his glass, and Harry forced himself to look away. “I would never begrudge a repressed man some fun with himself.”  


Harry didn’t even start to say that he wasn’t repressed. He sensed this conversation was going to be an uphill battle, but the faster he forced them into some form of camaraderie, the better. “Did you notice they all use my face from like five years ago? I don’t know if I should be offended at that or start using moisturiser.”  


A corner of Snape’s mouth twisted up, possibly a sign of humour, though Harry couldn’t be sure. “Afraid that your horde of admirers might leave for prettier waters?”  


Harry huffed a laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a horde of admirers, though that was likely thanks to the complex repelling charms they’d placed on the shop. Only those with genuine bike-related intent could approach the place. Which did, embarrassingly, include the odd person who wanted to shag Harry on a bike. “Can’t wait,” he said, then stood up and downed the last of his firewhiskey with a grimace. He needed a moment to collect himself. “I’ve been filling mine with sharks and angry selkies, but I’m not sure the message has quite gotten through yet. You good?”  


Snape tipped his glass towards Harry to show that it was almost empty, and Harry nodded.  


Back at the bar, Harry met eyes with not-Harry again, and decided he could probably drop the glamour under the guise of adding one. He finite’d the spell over his head. The barman took his order, and glanced over to the table Harry was sharing with Snape. “He’s not into that, you know,” he said, nodding to Harry’s newly revealed face. “Ask Sally here, he’s given it a shot.”  


Not-Harry shuddered. “Never again,” he said, eyes haunted. “Tore me a new one, it was brutal.”  


Harry swallowed, frowning. “Sorry, you don’t mean..?”  


“Oh!” ‘Sally’ laughed, and it was weird seeing someone else laughing with his face. “No, not… I meant more like, either he gets _really_ into the role, or he genuinely hates Harry Potter. I don’t even know what half the things he called me meant, but I got the impression that there’s no one on the planet he’d less like to fuck in the gents than the boy who lived.”  


Lovely. Not that Harry was expecting Snape to bend him over a table or whatever, but he’d hoped for eventual cordiality. He dropped a few coins on the bar for the whiskeys. “That’s alright, I’m not angling for a shag.”  


When he got back to the table, Snape was staring daggers into the back of Sally’s head. “Watch that one,” he said slowly. “Bit of a detention seeker, I suspect.”  


Harry frowned as he passed along Snape’s fire whiskey, for a moment thinking that Snape had mispronounced _attention seeker_. Then the meaning materialised in his mind, and he felt a blush creeping up his neck again. He didn’t have any naughty smiles in his customer-facing repertoire, so he had to pluck something out of nowhere and hope it gave the right impression. “Some wizards benefit from a little discipline,” he said.  


Snape’s hand tightened on his glass, and Harry switched to a more innocent smile. “Is this your customary topic for chatting with prospective customers? I must say, my expectations were low, but even I couldn’t have predicted such a ham-handed attempt at seduction.”  


“Would it work?” Harry asked, tipping his head to the side in a way he thought was mildly endearing when he practiced it in the mirror. “Cause I’m interested, you know.” He flushed suddenly, realising what he’d just said. “In the bike. I’m interested in designing you a bike.” Merlin.  


“Could we get on with it?” Snape asked, bored and clearly unimpressed. He probably regretted agreeing to meet with Harry already. “I’m sure this inept naivety act must have worked for you in the past, however you will find me more interested in the product than its creator.”  


Harry gulped his drink. He couldn’t decide if this was going better than expected or not. “Right. Do you mind me asking what led you to choose Winguardian? Don’t worry, I already know it wasn’t the Potter family charm.”  


“I’d like a new bike, and you came highly recommended,” Snape answered frankly.  


“Oh, who by?” Harry asked. He couldn’t imagine any of his previous clients being very close to Snape. “We do a referral programme, nothing too official but they’ll get a free service or three, depending on how much they wanna milk it.”  


Snape frowned, not the usual response people had upon finding out they could get free services for their mates. “They are perfectly capable of servicing their own vehicle, I should think,” he answered. That narrowed down the list of suspects a bit. “Ask your next question. Do you have a list?”  


Harry hid a frown. “I don’t usually bring an itemised list when I chat, no.”  


“Perhaps you should consider it,” Snape answered casually. “The conversation has been absolutely dire so far.”  


Harry forced a laugh, the only alternative strong enough to counter his desire for throat throttling. “I guess some things don’t improve with age, do they?” He had to keep himself under control if they were both going to emerge from this alive. Think about the magazine feature, he thought. This commission was worth a lot more than the temporary satisfaction of turning Snape into a frog and throwing him in front of a passing lorry. “Do you have something in mind, when it comes to the bike? Any must-haves or must-not-haves?”  


“What would be the point in hiring a designer if I already knew what bike I’d like? That’s your job, Potter.” It was almost like Snape _wanted_ to get hexed.  


Harry took the bolt back out of his pocket and transfigured it into a little Bonneville. “A starting point would be nice,” he said, as patiently as he could manage. “You have a Japanese bike now, don’t you? From the seventies.”  


“It was my father’s,” Snape answered, and Harry perked up. Personal information, finally something he could work with.  


“Great! Did you work on it together when you were a kid?” he asked, jumping on the topic.  


Snape looked down at his glass. “No. He used it to circumnavigate the picket lines during the miners strike of ’84,” he answered slowly. “In fact, I suspect that he may once or twice have driven it through the picket lines.” Eesh, talk about putting your foot in it. Harry pressed his lips shut and waited to see if anything more was coming, but Snape stayed silent.  


“R-right. I can understand why you’d want something new,” Harry said, aiming for a light tone, but it came out more manic than he’d intended. “So long as you’re not sold on imports, is all. I pretty much exclusively work with British bikes.”  


“How very… _patriotic_ of you,” Snape replied, his eyes snapping back up to meet Harry’s.  


Excellent. Now he seemed like a racist arsehole. “It’s not that,” Harry argued softly, trying to chuckle about the little misunderstanding. “I just own a lot of parts, so it’s convenient.”  


Merlin’s balls, he was starting to wish Snape really would hex him, just to give them both an out.  


“Choose the model that’s most convenient, then,” Snape said, gesturing to the figure in Harry’s hand.  


As much as Harry loved the bike, he didn’t want to make just another Bonneville. Not for his Snape-Potter feature, anyway. It had to be something different, something eye-catching that no one else was doing. “Well, if you’re sure... I have an almost-complete Defiant we could use for a base,” he said, transfiguring the bolt into a DKR Defiant, possibly one of the ugliest scooters ever produced. Its nose was almost comparable with Snape’s.  


“I happen to know that scooters are in fashion at the moment,” Snape responded.  


Harry grinned. “ _Vespas_ are in fashion. The Defiant never was, and never will be.”  


“Then we are well suited,” Snape said.  


He was either lying about wanting a bike or he was on the wind up. Either way, Harry was reaching the end of his tether. His smile felt stretched like an elastic, tense and ready to ping off any second.  


Harry transfigured the bolt into an Ariel Square Four, a much more dignified shape. It had a very nicely balanced aesthetic. “What about this? Timeless.”  


“Fine,” was all Snape had to say about it. Infuriating man!  


Harry sighed.  


“Look, I love what I do. I care about what I do. And I like to work with people who care, too. I’m not wasting a good bike on someone who doesn’t give a rat’s arse about it,” he said.  


This was clearly a lie, since he frequently worked for clients who couldn’t tell a Honda from a Vincent by looking at the logo, but Snape didn’t need to know that. He held the bike up higher and transfigured it again. “What about this? It’s a Royal Enfield: super lightweight, rugged and pared-down so they could be parachuted into warzones. The Flying Flea, they called it. Now compare it to this one- Brough Superior, manufactured in the same year yet wildly different in look and attitude. Check out these details: the double pipe, the V-twin. Proper performance bike, amazing sound, and much better handling - but rubbish for skydiving. They’re both totally awesome to the people who love them. Don’t you have something like that? Something that sparks joy in you when you lay eyes on it?”  


Snape looked at him, then down at his drink. Harry realised that he’d pushed too far, and dropped the bike with a jarring clatter. He was getting too flustered over this, but he just couldn’t get a read on what Snape wanted at all. It was so bloody frustrating.  


“What about you?”  


“Me?” Harry asked, surprised. No one had ever asked him. He shook his head and forcibly lowered his shoulders into a more relaxed posture. Snape was finally making an effort at conversing, at least. “I like a lot of bikes - you might have guessed already. It’s not about me, though. Even if you’re not sure what bike you’d like, why don’t you tell me what you’ll use it for, or what you enjoy about riding, and I can make some recommendations?”  


For a long moment, it seemed like Snape wasn’t going to answer at all. His eyes flicked between Harry and the door, but settled on the bike. “It is freeing,” he said, picking it up and studying it. “When I ride, I am a free man.”  


-*-  


“Do you think I’m being an idiot?” Harry asked Ron and Millicent the next day, sitting on the edge of Millie’s worktable as he picked his way through an egg and cress sandwich.  


Ron raised his eyebrows and sat back on a chair he had transfigured out of three tyres and a socket wrench. “That rhetorical?” he asked, cheek twitching with the urge to smile.  


“I’m being serious,” Harry sighed. “Am I being an idiot? Is it futile trying to design something Snape’ll actually like?”  


“You make it sound as though he doesn’t like anything,” Millicent pointed out. She was tidying a mess of steel wire by winding it around her forearm, but paused to give him the lecture. “He’s a wizard, not a scarecrow. He likes stuff.”  


Harry perked up. “Yeah? Like what?”  


“Making children suffer,” Ron answered loudly. “And scaring the shit out of the rest of us.”  


Harry appealed to Millie to say something more useful, but she shrugged. “Can’t argue with that.”  


“I never say anything I can’t back up with evidence and witnesses,” Ron informed them, and Harry stored the phrase for taking the piss next time Ron was wrong. Probably wouldn’t be a long wait.  


“Okay, but if he’s really just a guy like the rest of us, what’s a normal thing he likes? Something we could actually understand.”  


Ron grinned. “He seems to enjoy pissing you off, and that’s something I can totally under-mpff mm mmmmmn mfffpfh!”  


“Feeling’s mutual,” Harry replied, putting his wand away. “What about you, Mils? Got any secret Slytherin insight?”  


“If we had house secrets, Snape’s the last person who’d appreciate me spilling them to a Griffindork like you,” she answered. She got to the end of the wire, tied it in and then hung it on a hook on the wall. “He likes knowing stuff, I guess. He hates secrets, or being forced or manipulated.”  


“No one likes being manipulated,” Harry argued. “And everyone likes knowing stuff.”  


“Fine,” Millie said, picking up another scrambled wire. She was a chronic organiser, the opposite of Harry. “But you never repeat this, alright?”  


Harry put his sandwich down, leaning forward. “Sure,” he lied.  


“He has a sweet tooth,” she said, her reluctance showing how serious a declaration it was. “Pear drops, sherbet lemons, any kind of hard-boiled sweets, really. Loves ‘em.”  


As earth-shattering as this information was, it wasn’t any more useful than what Harry already knew. He sat back, disappointed. “So I should bribe him into telling me what bike he wants with a stick of rock?”  


Ron managed to get his mouth free again, and gasped dramatically to let everyone know. “Rock’s not even that hard,” he said. His tone spoke of personal and deeply scarring disappointment on this subject. “It just sticks to your teeth in a weird, gritty way.”  


“You’re supposed to suck on it,” Millicent answered.  


“Right, I’ll stick to the cola cubes then,” Harry sighed. He was getting nowhere.  


“I don’t see why you’re shitting buckets over this. In fact, I can only think of reasons not to,” Ron said. He held up a spanner and used it to count off points on his grimy fingers. “One, he’s a git. Two, he hates you. Three, he doesn’t seem to want a bike in the first place. Four, he treated us like shit at school. Oh, and did I mention? He hates you.”  


Before Harry could answer, he spotted Heathcote Barbary loitering outside the garage door, and stood hurriedly. Shit, the guy was early. Ron followed his gaze and grimaced.  


“Cottie! What’re you standing out there for? Come on in,” Harry called. Ron turned his back on the door and pulled a face. Millicent promptly disappeared into the WC. Traitors, both of them. Harry had to carry the burden of customer service alone.  


He dragged up Customer Smile 1, which paired well with the enthusiastic greeting, and walked forward to meet Heathcote halfway. “We were just having lunch, but let me show you what we’ve got so far. You having a good day?”  


Heathcote gave Harry the most unconvincing disinterested look he’d ever seen, and eyed the workshop with a poorly practiced stoic face. It worked well on stage, but in-person it was annoyingly performative. “I’m having a great day,” he complained. “It’s so uninspiring. I signed up for a life of agony, but all I get is this constant melancholy.”  


“That’s a shame,” Harry empathised, patting the guy on the back in what he hoped was a suitably masculine way. “You should write that down for your next song.”  


Heathcote straightened a little. “You think so?”  


Harry nodded, and the guitarist got out his notebook, murmuring the words to himself as he wrote them out. Then he looked up with a frown. “Did I hear you right earlier, you’re making a bike for Professor Snape?”  


“He’s not a professor anymore, but yeah I’m giving it a shot, why?” Harry asked. He didn’t have Heathcote down as the eavesdropping sort.  


Heathcote shrugged, then frowned and held his quill against his lips, and shrugged again. “It’s only… What does he want a flying bike for? He can just, you know, fly.”  


Harry’s jaw dropped. Right. Snape was one of the few wizards alive who knew the secret of true flight. What did he need a flying bike for? He didn’t even need a broom.  


_When I ride, I am a free man._  


“I suppose he wants to impress someone,” Heathcote continued, answering himself before Harry could think of a suitable lie.  


“What?”  


Heathcote grinned. “He’s got that whole untouchable badass thing going on, you know? Like he’s too cool for the likes of you, no matter how cool you happen to be. Makes you wonder who he’s trying so hard to impress.”  


“He’s not-“ Harry began, then remembered to shove his customer face back on. He put on the Reverse Psychology Self Deprecation smile. “Well, he’s certainly not trying to impress me. Shall we get to business?”  


“Of course,” Heathcote answered in an almost normal voice, then ruined it by giving Harry a half-bow.  


Harry led him to a toolstation nearby and picked up a few painted sample cards he’d prepped earlier in the week, fanning them out for the man to see. They were the colour options for the bat bike, each mixed and layered with subtle differences. “So the main thing is this, we’re taking her in for painting tomorrow and I wanted to run by the final colour with you. We decided midnight over the floo, but there’s so many midnights, you know?” Harry had mocked up seven versions of the colour, with varying levels of blueness and shine. Card C was the one they would be painting the bike. “I call this one Missing you. This one’s Mischief. Dying Stars…” he rolled out a few other poetic-sounding names off the top of his head as he pointed to each card in turn. “What do you think?”  


He resisted the urge to nudge C forwards. Heathcote had eyes - surely he could see all on his own that C was the superior shade, perfectly balanced with just enough of a sparkle to stand out without overpowering the impact of the wings?  


“I quite like Infinite Romance,” Heathcote replied, and Harry looked down quickly, trying to remember which one he’d given that particular silly name to.  


Optimistically, he pointed to C. “This one?” Heathcote pointed to E instead, with a light frown. Of course he’d pick E, the tasteless oaf. Time for the backup plan.  


Harry took E out of the fan and held it up against the bike. Awful. “Fantastic. This is really amazing, you’ve got such a great eye.” He paused, then put on a thoughtful look with a slight frown. “You know, it kind of reminds me of- no. No, I shouldn’t tell you. Look at me, running my mouth...”  


Heathcote left him waiting an entire seven seconds before finally asking. “Reminds you of what?”  


Harry shook his head, turning away dramatically. He made a mock-panic face at Ron, who was pretending to be very busy doing Engineering Things. “Oh it’s nothing, just, it’s quite similar to this other colour I’ve been working on. I… well, it was specifically designed for a particular client, but he hasn’t seen it yet. The pigments are quite expensive. Exclusive.” He opened a drawer of the toolstation, closed it with a bang and then opened another, pretending to search through it. “Ah, here. I shouldn’t show you. It’s a secret project, but- oh, when I think about wasting it on that awful bike of his, when I know an artist such as yourself would appreciate its subtle beauty far better, I just…”  


“Come now, Harry. We’re mates, aren’t we?” Heathcote asked, generously playing his part. They most certainly were nothing of the kind.  


“Of course,” Harry answered. With a subtle copying charm and well-practiced sleight of hand, he pulled another C out of the drawer, but didn’t give it to the guitarist right away. He held it to his chest as if it were precious, not to be earned easily. “Of course we are. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a peek, would it? And if you like it… hell to that other guy, right?”  


He guided Heathcote back to the bike, lifted the man’s hand and then placed the card in it so that it lay against the fuel tank.  


“I’ll move away a bit,” Harry said, making his voice reverent. “Give you a moment to really feel it.” He stepped back a few times, quietly, as the man stood still and silent.  


Ron mouthed _what the hell_ , and Harry gave him a wide-eyed shrug. He had no idea what he was doing, either.  


“It’s perfect,” Heathcote said, voice filled with awe, and Ron covered his mouth with a hand. “Harry, this is beautiful.”  


“Mm,” Harry responded, not trusting himself with words for a second. He walked back to the bike and carefully took the card out of Heathcote’s hand before he could change his mind. “Great. I knew you’d love it, man of taste like yourself.” While things were going well, he decided to push his luck a bit.  


“Now, while I have you, I wanted to chat about these H-spheres. You can see them studded along the wings here. We could have done this a few different ways, but I thought of you and all your piercings, and I said to myself, I said - Harry, you can use a boring old support mesh on some boring old bastard’s bike, but your mate Cottie deserves something that really _tells a story_ …”  


-*-  


Harry was still riding the high of successfully tricking some taste into Heathcote Barbary when a knock on his office door interrupted his freeform design session.  


He looked up to see Ginny leaning casually against the doorframe, arms behind her back in a way that pushed her chest forward. If not for the fact that she was the only person who knew his orientation, he’d think she was after something. “Wotcher, Harry,” she said. “Guess I missed him again?”  


“You should get Millicent to send a patronus, it’s much faster,” he said, half to confirm his suspicions of how Ginny always seemed to know when Heathcote was coming.  


“Not everyone can cast one, you know,” Ginny admonished. Harry grimaced in apology - he often forgot how much of a privilege it was to have a strong patronus, to have strong enough happy memories to cast one. He made a mental note to take Millie aside after work one day and help her out, if she wanted. Ginny shifted her weight against the frame. “So are you…”  


Harry raised his eyebrows, waiting for the end of the sentence.  


“...fine?” she finished awkwardly. “Are you doing fine?”  


Years after Harry’s confession and their subsequent breakup, she still asked it the same way, as if she expected him to still be hung up over the whole thing. “Yes?” he answered, meaning to sound more certain.  


“So have you found yourself a boyf-“ She was almost knocked back by the force of Harry’s lip-sealing hex, and he took advantage of her momentary surprise to rush past her to the door.  


“Careful,” he hissed, pulling her inside and closing the door. He caught a glimpse of Ron’s surprised face on the other side of the workshop, and sighed internally. He was going to get entirely the wrong impression.  


Freeing herself of both the hex and his grip on her arm, Ginny laughed. It was a bright sound, genuine like everything else about her. He’d loved that sound, a million years ago. “You _still_ haven’t told him?”  


“And I’m not going to,” Harry said pointedly. He busied himself with piling up some of the papers on his desk, even though it meant he’d have to spread them back out when she was gone.  


Ginny bounced herself into the spare chair and looked up at him, a mixture of mirth and concern. “You’ll have to tell him eventually.”  


“Why?” Harry asked. They’d been through this. He was going to spend the rest of his life alone, and then it wouldn’t matter if he was straight, gay or bonkers.  


“Because if you don’t, he’s going to find out and be really _saaaad_ that you didn’t trust him enough to tell him yourself,” she said.  


Harry frowned. “You wouldn’t.”  


“Of course not!” Ginny said, outraged. “I’ve kept your stupid, unnecessary little secret this long, haven’t I?”  


Harry could sense that there was more, so he silently walked to his chair and sat down.  


“Don’t use that look on me!” Gin said, but it only took her a few seconds to crack. “Okay, fine. Millicent knows - but she worked it out herself!”  


“What the hell, Ginny?” Harry exclaimed, then dropped his voice with a glance to the door. “What the actual hell?”  


Ginny put her hands up defensively. “Cool your shoes, she worked it out.”  


Harry didn’t believe that for a second. “Not even a bloody legilimens could work it out,” he argued. He felt a dull throb of panic rise in his chest. This was the last thing he needed right now.  


“Well there must be some kind of sign you don’t know about,” she argued. “Gaydar or whatever, you can sense each other.”  


“Sense-? I don’t have anything like…” Harry trailed off, frowning. “Wait, Millicent’s gay?”  


Ginny laughed. “You’re useless, you really are,” she said. She had no concept whatsoever that he might possibly have reason to be angry or annoyed, which made it harder to hold onto the feeling.  


He ran a hand through his hair. He’d been planning on never telling anyone for all of his life, but now the cat was out of the proverbial bag, it was only a matter of time. Bloody hell.  


He had two choices now, didn’t he? Live in constant fear of the day he was outed, or have it out and refuse to let it have any power over him. “I want you to know that I am really pissed off about this,” he told Ginny, just to make sure she knew. Then he walked to the door, wrenched it open and called out. “Ron. I’m gay. We’re never talking about it again, but I wanted to be the one to tell you.”  


He shut the door against Ron’s confused shout and Millicent’s snigger.  


“I hope you’re happy,” he said, turning back to Ginny. The impact was lessened somewhat by the fact she clearly was.  


“While we’re on the topic of things one of me or Mils knew and the other found out totally unrelatedly,” Ginny ploughed on, with an altogether sadistic expression of joy. “I heard on the grapevine that you graced a certain venue with your presence last night.”  


Oh, for Merlin’s sake... Harry leaned against the door and took a deep breath. “I had no idea it was a place like that,” he said softly. “I was just there to meet Snape.”  


Her eyes lit up, and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Why was it that even years after they broke up, he was still the same bumbling idiot as ever in her presence? He supposed it wasn’t just him - she had that effect on everyone. “I see…”  


“About the bike I’m designing for him,” Harry clarified loudly. Why bother, though? She was going to think what she wanted anyway.  


“And is he..?”  


“No.” Harry said. Then he frowned. “Yes, I assume so. I mean, maybe. He chose the place, but he’s probably just trying to embarrass me.”  


Gin sat back with a small sigh. “It’s typical. The first eligible gay man who takes an interest in you, and he’s far too old.” She shook her head, possibly at the state of the universe.  


“Takes a- Ginny, he wasn’t trying to-“ Merlin, he couldn’t say it. Snape! He hated Harry, absolutely loathed him. There was no way. His heart gave a little leap anyway, reminding him of the new skin he’d seen at the pub. Big hands, intense eyes. Harry shook the memory away. “You’ve got your wires seriously crossed. He’s just on the wind up.”  


“If you’re sure,” she replied lightly, in the tone of someone who was very sure of the opposite.  


“I am. The pearly gates of heaven will open up for Voldemort before Snape has even one nice thought about me.”  


-*-  


It was a testament to Ron’s awkwardness and inability to speak of serious matters that he didn’t work up the courage to ask Harry about the whole _being gay_ thing until he was putting away his things on Saturday afternoon.  


“You’re going to meet Snape again, yeah?” Ron asked, his tone falsely casual. He was kneeling by the bat bike, lightly sanding and polishing away imperfections in the gloss. The colour had come out nicely, just as Harry envisaged.  


Harry paused in the motion of pulling his office door shut. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am.” He looked at the floor, at Ron, at the bike, then the ceiling, back to Ron and then finally down at the sheets of paper in his hand. He shuffled a bit. “Four o’ clock,” he added. It was a quarter to, now.  


“Are we going to talk about it?” Ron splodged some grit onto a cloth and started rubbing it in small circles on one of the wings.  


“Do you want to?” Harry asked.  


“I don’t know,” Ron replied, frowning down at his work. “Ginny said I should talk to you about it, and she’s usually right.”  


Harry stepped into the workshop proper, closing the door behind him with a squeal and a click. “Okay. Well, uh, what did you want to say?”  


“I don’t know,” Ron said again, this time with an uncomfortable shrug. Their eyes met. “She didn’t tell me that bit.”  


Harry smiled. “I guess if you’ve said everything you wanna say, and so have I, then we can just tell her we talked about it?”  


Relief washed over Ron. “Right,” he agreed. “Talked for ages, we did. Had it all out, all the… feelings, and stuff.”  


“Exactly,” Harry said. “Right, I’d better- I mean, that was a good talk. Good job Ron, we should, uh… Yes.”  


“Yeah, go meet Snape. Your client. Doing good work, getting us those commissions,” Ron replied. His mouth widened into a thin line. “Please leave. This is the worst.”  


“Agreed. Let’s never talk about it again.”  


Seven minutes later, Harry walked into the Fudge Bonnet. He was himself, although he’d added a couple of glamour tricks for the sake of blending in better. A shining-eyes charm he’d learnt from Lavender ages ago, which made his eyes catch the light prettily in any setting, and a little colour added to his faded scar, since the people he’d seen last time all had a fresh red look to the thunderbolt.  


He sat and patted down his pockets to find something new to transfigure - it was too warm for his coat - but Snape found him just as he was pulling a washing machine-ruined receipt out of his jeans. He tossed the powdery receipt-clump on the table anyway - if he put it back in his pocket, it’d never come out again.  


Snape was wearing long sleeves today, part of a grey turtleneck top that also covered the majority of his bite scar. “Good afternoon,” he said, pulling out the wooden chair opposite. Harry didn’t realise he hadn’t bought a drink yet until Snape placed one in front of him. “I see that you’ve started down the slippery path of visual augmentations.”  


“Hello to you too,” Harry replied. He attempted a smile. “I see you’re all covered up today.”  


“I decided on second consideration that this suits me best.” Snape tugged the sleeves down further so that they stretched over part of his hands.  


Huh, so open-shirt Snape was a one-off. Harry shook off Heathcote’s words about Snape wanting to impress someone. “Dunno, it was good to see more of you,” he said, then made a conscious effort not to blush or freeze up immediately afterwards. That was not what he had meant to say. “I mean, it’s good to see you again. After all these years. Glad you, uh, survived… and everything.” Merlin, Ron had infected him.  


“Indeed,” Snape replied slowly, the same way he might have if Harry openly declared himself the daftest man on the planet. Which, effectively, he had. “Have you learnt your lesson and prepared an agenda?”  


“No.” Harry raised a finger to make his point. “I never have, and I never will.”  


Snape’s mouth quirked into a half-smile, and his head moved minutely to the side. “A family trait, I believe.”  


“What, not setting agendas?” Harry laughed. Oh. He put on the Client-Made-A-Joke smile. “Learning lessons, right. I can’t say you’re wrong.” He looked down at his drink, twirling the glass round once in his fingers.  


“I hadn’t the time to poison it,” Snape informed him.  


Hah. Another joke. Weren’t they a right pair. “Losing your touch?” Harry teased, testing the waters. So far this was going far better than Wednesday. Maybe there was hope after all.  


Snape sipped his whiskey. “Losing my patience,” he replied. “Shall we dispense with the small talk?”  


Never mind. Harry rolled his eyes.  


“We’re having a chat. Small talk’s kind of the point, but if you want big talk, we can do that instead,” he said, then tried to think of a deeply personal topic he could ask Snape to make a point. Preferably one that wasn’t also deeply personal to himself, or anything he was afraid to find out about. Nothing good sprang to mind, considering their shared history. “Favourite potion.”  


“How droll,” Snape drawled, and Harry could only agree with him. He shrugged. Snape let out a suffering breath. “Queen’s Tincture.”  


Harry’d never heard of it. “What’s it do?”  


“Nothing of great import. Historically, it was used by ladies across England in order to aid their complexion,” Snape explained, though it didn’t really cast any light on why it deserved to be held in such high esteem.  


“Like an anti-wrinkle cream?” Harry asked. He was vaguely aware of the existence of such things - creams, serums and potions, all proclaiming to lift years from your face. Not that he’d been looking. Then again, Snape didn’t look too bad for 49, so maybe there was some merit to that sort of thing.  


Snape scowled at him. “Not at all. Anyone idiotic enough to spend money on that nonsense deserves to be parted from their galleons. A clean face and a natural, neutral moisturiser daily is all that’s needed.” Harry didn’t have time to process Snape lecturing him on skincare before he carried on speaking. “During the Elizabethan era, a snow-white complexion with reddened cheeks and lips was the desired standard for beauty. This trend was set by Queen Elizabeth the first, and hence could be replicated by drinking the Queen’s Tincture.”  


Right. The history lesson was going in one ear and out the other for Harry, but he was pretty sure he still had no idea why this would be Snape’s favourite potion of all time.  


“Do you..?” Harry asked, unwilling to finish the sentence in case of another lecture. As he raised his glass for a sip, he waved a couple of fingers in the direction of Snape.  


“Don’t be absurd, Potter,” Snape scoffed. “You can’t put icing on a turd and call it a cake. I am well aware of both my strengths and my shortcomings.” He flicked his hand upwards towards his face, mimicking Harry’s gesture to indicate one such shortcoming.  


Was there a way of truthfully telling a technically unattractive person that they weren’t quite as bad as a turd, without offending them? Harry tried to think of one. Thankfully, before he had the opportunity of opening his mouth and ruining both of their evenings, someone else came to give it a go.  


Harry and Snape both looked up sharply as a third figure pulled up a chair, its wooden feet squealing loudly on the floor. The stranger grinned over the sound.  


“Fancy the three of us at the same table, eh? What do you say? Seems like too good an opportunity to miss, if you ask me.”  


Harry glanced across at Snape, whose scowl mirrored the one Harry felt furrowing his own brow. Mr Annoying had shoulder length wavy brown hair, a bedraggled goatee and heavily shadowed eyes. He wasn’t using a full glamour, but the tastelessly torn prison outfit clearly showed who he was dressed up as tonight. His right wrist was bound in a metal handcuff, the other end dangling open in what was probably meant as an invitation.  


Snape gripped his glass so hard that Harry was afraid it might break. “Sirius Black was a menace, a bully and an arrogant prick,” he said, voice quiet to start but it got louder as he built momentum. “He attempted more than once to have me killed. Why in Salazar’s name would I want even such a poor imitation as your own anywhere near my being, let alone wish for his company in the fulfilment of carnal desires?”  


Harry leaned back in his chair, some words about Sirius being his dead godfather dying in his throat. Best leave Snape to it, he thought.  


Not-Sirius’ cartoonish grin only widened, showing even rows of white teeth that were nothing like Sirius’ had been. It was like an awful halloween costume - muggles dressing as sexy librarians, totally ignoring the fact that librarians didn’t even have a uniform. “Wow, you’re really great at this, your voice is almost spot on,” Not-Sirius said. Harry’s eyes bulged at the almost. “But you know how it goes, it’s half the fun, right? It’s why you’re here with him. Two men who are so clearly at odds, enemies at heart. A conversation starts, a jibe quickly turns into an argument and then it gets physical. You push him against a wall, he struggles a bit, you tell him to shut up, he says make me, and then you push your lips against his and-“  


“Enough.” Snape looked like he was on the verge of being sick. He took Harry’s ruined receipt, transfigured it flat and then cast a dictionary charm on it. Dark writing materialised on the page, and Harry had just enough time to read the word ‘Consent’ before Snape shoved the paper at their intruder. He stared the man right in the eye and spoke in a low, dangerous hum. “I should say that you may return upon learning the meaning of this word, however that would be a lie. If you approach me again, attempt to speak to me, or even look at me in a way that I do not like - and I guarantee you, there is no way I like to be looked at - then you will find yourself the victim of every curse I ever dreamed of throwing at the real Sirius Black. To further labour this point so that even a wretched reprobate such as yourself may understand, I do not mean the sort that stops you from coming until you’ve pleaded for hours. I mean long-forgotten Greek hexes that encourage your little friend Sirius Junior down there to leap out of your trousers and hop, flop and roll his way to the nearest fireplace, from whence he will send himself via floo to the fourth basement floor of the Ministry’s Experiments and Accidental Discoveries Department, which I have reliably been informed is suffering from an infestation of _fire ants_. Do you understand?”  


The three of them sat in silence for a few stretched-out seconds, as Snape calmly turned back to his drink and took a long gulp. Harry locked eyes with Not-Sirius. “This is the part where you leave,” he whispered.  


As if released from petrificus, the man stumbled away hurriedly.  


Harry laughed at the spectacle, then looked at Snape, whose shoulders were still hunched tensely. “Well now I feel like a right pillock for thinking you were trying to get rid of me all this time. That was amazing.”  


“What’s amazing is that they keep trying,” Snape retorted, then downed the last of his whiskey and stood up.  


Harry put up a hand. “I’ll get this round,” he said quickly. “And when I get back, so long as you haven’t murdered anyone else, you can tell me what’s so great about a potion you don’t use.”  


He strode up to the bar, leaned against it with his forearms and let out a slow breath. Bloody hell. There was something intensely satisfying about watching someone get eviscerated like that, but it also left him with a weird feeling of tension. He didn’t like it at all.  


“Still having a crack at it, then?” A voice asked to his left, and he looked up to see himself - or rather, Sally.  


“Mmm,” Harry said noncommittally.  


Not put off, Sally continued. “Gotta admit, it’s nice seeing it happen to someone else for a change. A bit hot, actually.”  


“Mmm,” Harry said again, not wanting to talk about it. “I guess.”  


He took the whiskeys back to their table. “This tincture, then?”  


“It’s nothing,” Snape said, waving him off. “Sappy nonsense.”  


Harry grinned. “Mate, I love sappy nonsense. It’s the best kind.”  


“Please refrain from calling me ‘mate’ again, or any of its relations.” Snape took his glass and gave it a sniff, as if Harry couldn’t be trusted to say the words two firewhiskeys please without supervision. “In return, I shall endeavour not to call you an idiot. Unless you deserve it.”  


“Which is always, I’m guessing?” Harry said, tipping his glass sideways with a mock questioning look. “Most people call me Harry, so you could use that. If you like.”  


Snape grimaced. “If you were to repeat what most people call me then I should be forced to hex you.”  


Harry laughed. “So I should call you..?”  


“Snape,” Snape answered. “Snape will do.”  


It felt like a bit of a snub, considering that Harry had offered up his first name, but then Snape was two fewer syllables than Severus, so he decided to take it as a win. “And the potion? Tell me your sappy nonsense, Snape.”  


For a moment he thought he’d gone too far, but Snape gave him a withering look and sighed. “The Queen’s Tincture is made from the vilest collection of ingredients even the most sadistic of potion brewers could not conceive in their nightmares.”  


“Sounds great so far,” Harry commented, and Snape ignored him in favour of becoming more animated.  


“Not only does it look like something from a muggle horror film for most of the brewing process, but it also stinks to high heaven. It is disgusting. Every ingredient added, every stir of the rod, every twitch of the flame only adds to its putrescence.” He lazily mimed the actions of adding, stirring, twitching, and Harry wondered how much more he’d have cared about potions if Snape had described them like this at school. “By this point, most brewers would have given up any desire to exist within a twelve mile radius of their own laboratory, let alone continue with the endeavour.”  


“But you continue,” Harry prompted, embarrassingly taken in by the story.  


Snape nodded slightly. “I continue. The last ingredient is a single sanguinus flower bud, pressed stem-first into the congealed surface.” Snape delicately placed an imaginary bud onto the table using his thumb and forefinger. “And with a simple charm, the bud is opened. The brewer must then stir quickly thrice - that means three times, Potter - and lift away the rod without agitating the surface further.”  


“And?” Harry asked, when Snape paused. He didn’t mention that Snape had called him Potter again instead of Harry.  


“And before them will lie a potion of the most beautiful colour known to muggles and wizards alike.”  


-*-  


Hagrid’s bike roared to life and then settled into a steady rumble. Harry stepped back, sweating from the effort of kick starting it. The bike was a Triumph, the very one which had lured Harry into the rabbit hole of classic British motorcycles - and since it had been modified for a half giant, the seat came almost all the way up to Harry’s chest.  


“You sure you can ride it?” Ron shouted, leaning against the seat on the other side with a lazy smile.  


Harry stood straighter. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?” he called back. “It was fine.”  


“You rode it for ten minutes at the Burrow, and almost killed yourself and everyone else at the party,” Ron laughed. Funny way of showing his concern.  


“This time I’m sober, and it’s only 250-odd miles to Hogwarts.” Despite his professed confidence, Harry wasn’t sure how takeoff and landing would go. The cruising bit in the middle would be fine though - just fly North and hold on for dear life. “Besides! If I don’t do something stupid and reckless every now and then, how will anyone know I’m still a Griffindor?”  


-*-  


“-nd back, he’s coming round now…”  


Harry jerked awake, sitting up and grabbing desperately for his wand.  


“Your glasses,” said a familiar voice, and something vaguely less blurry than the rest of the world approached. Harry, his wits returning, sheepishly took the glasses and put them on.  


“Made it to Hogwarts, then,” he told Madam Pomfrey. “Bike alright?”  


“Oh, the bike is quite fine I assure you. You provided it with quite the soft landing,” she replied, and Harry was pleased to note that her admonishing tone had lost its effectiveness over him. He grinned.  


“Don’t remember that bit, probably for the best. Anything I should know?” Harry reached up his arms and wriggled them experimentally. All seemed good there - his hands were the only thing that truly mattered. He flexed his wrists and articulated his fingers. “No cool new scars?”  


At that point, he spotted three kids standing behind Pomfrey. “These are the students who witnessed the accident,” she explained, stepping aside to give Harry a better view. They didn’t look scarred for life, at least. The one in the middle had a familiar-looking face, but Harry couldn’t put a finger on it. “Freddie Bulstrode here saved your life with his quick thinking.” Ah, that would be it.  


“Freddie, is it? Thanks. I owe you one,” Harry said, and leaned forward to shake the boy’s hand. “Any relation to Millicent?”  


Freddie’s hand twitched away momentarily, before he recovered and gave Harry a strong shake. “Cousin. We don’t talk.”  


Harry felt his smile falter. “Oh, that’s a shame. She works at my workshop, I was going to invite you and your friends on a tour to say thanks, but if you’re on bad terms…”  


“We’re not _allowed_ to talk,” Freddie corrected himself quickly. It was notoriously difficult to get to the workshop without a business appointment, and Harry was amused to see the battle played out in the kid’s eyes. “On account of her being… you know.”  


“Halfblood?” Harry guessed, eyeing Freddie’s Slytherin robes. “A traitor to Slytherin-kind who works for a Griffindork like me?”  


Freddie frowned. “No. She’s… _like that_. So we’re not allowed to talk to her.”  


Ah. _Like that_. Harry frowned right back at him. “Yeah? Well so am I, so I guess you can’t talk to me either.”  


That gave Freddie a shock. His two friends sent him questioning looks, but he brushed them off with a slight shrug of a shoulder. Ah, the wordless communication of lifelong friends. It was nice to see it, even between Slytherins.  


“No one knows that, actually,” Harry continued lightly. “At least, very few. Top secret information, it is. Since you don’t want to see the bikes, that’s your thanks. Top secret information about Harry Potter.”  


Freddie’s mates nudged him, offended at being left out, but he ignored them. “I never said I didn’t want to. And I’m socially obligated to keep your secret now - that’s torture, not thanks!”  


Harry laughed. “I’m sure it’ll come out eventually, and you’ve got witnesses to say you knew it first. That’s got to be worth a bit of street cred, even these days.”  


“No one says _street cred_ ,” Freddie replied, but his frown turned thoughtful. “Fine.” He held his hand out to Harry and they shook a second time. Harry kept a very serious face on.  


“Go on then,” Madam Pomfrey said, herding the kids away. “I said you could stay until he woke up, now off to lessons with you.”  


“You should reach out to Millicent!” Harry called after them. “She’s nice.”  


Freddie’s head reappeared in the doorway. “I’m not _allowed_.”  


“That never stopped me,” Harry replied, and then shut his mouth tight in response to Pomfrey’s stern expression.  


“You’re very fortunate to be alive,” she told him. “As it is, a few emendos and a blood replenisher, and you’re right as rain. Ready to cause more mischief, no doubt.”  


Blood replenisher, great. Harry was looking for an in. He found an empty vial on the bedside table and inspected it. “I heard Sn… Severus is still brewing for you. The new professor not up to scratch?”  


“There’s no comparison when it comes to quality. Professor Hodgelow understands and appreciates the extra time it affords her,” Pomfrey replied, smoothing the front of her apron with a light frown. Harry very much doubted those words. “And I hardly think Severus would appreciate your prying, nor your familiarity.”  


“It’s alright, we’re friends,” Harry lied. “I’m designing him a bike, actually.”  


Pomfrey’s eyebrow twitched at the mention of more bikes. Clearly a woman with opinions on the subject. “Regardless, in my long experience he appreciates prying even less from his friends.”  


Harry shrugged. “It’s in my nature. Does he really hate snakes?”  


“I should think that if you had been killed by one, you too would be a little afraid-“ She stopped herself with a very Hagrid-like expression, and then scowled at Harry as if her slip was all his fault. “If you’re well enough to snoop, then you’re well enough to apparate home.”  


“Absolutely,” Harry agreed, not wanting to push his luck. “Do you think the headmistress’ll have time to see me if I’m really cheeky?”  


Pomfrey pulled the blankets off Harry’s legs and all but threw him out of bed. “She’s a very busy woman.”  


Harry let himself be herded towards the door, much like Freddie and his mates had been earlier, and then turned to give Pomfrey his most winning smile. “But I’m ever so charming,” he argued. “Surely she’ll find a moment to see this beautiful face?”  


Pomfrey considered him, then sighed in defeat. “Yes, I imagine she will. Now off with you. I have things to be about.”  


-*-  


“I’m so very glad to hear that the two of you are getting along,” Dumbledore’s portrait said, leaning forward with that characteristic twinkle in his eye. “What do you think, Minerva?”  


Headmistress McGonagall sat opposite Harry, the long expanse of her sturdy desk between them. She had grown visibly older in a way neither Snape nor Pomfrey seemed to have, but her posture and sharp eyes made it impossible to think her any weaker for it. “What do I think?” She asked in her clipped Scottish accent. “I shall tell you what I think, Albus - Severus would be very put out to discover that you two have been gossiping about him.”  


Harry’s teacup rattled against its saucer, and he placed them on the desk. “You must be the millionth person to tell me that,” he complained, and waved a hand at Dumbledore. “He gets it. I’m just trying to be a good friend.”  


He was beginning to think that he’d gone too deep on the whole friendship angle of his relationship with Snape, but he’d got himself into a hole now so he just kept digging. Hopefully he’d find treasure, and it’d all be worthwhile in the end.  


“Friend or not, you’ll see the wrong end of his wand when he finds out,” McGonagall insisted.  


Harry smiled tightly. “I won’t tell him if you don’t.”  


She looked surprised. “Potter, anything Poppy knows, Severus knows. I’d be very much taken aback if they’re not chatting over the floo at this very moment.”  


A chilling thought, if ever there was one. Oh well, he could only plough on at this point. “They’re close, then?”  


“Ah, Poppy has always had a soft spot for that boy,” Dumbledore sighed, and his face took on a far-off look. “He must have spent as much time in the infirmary every single week as most boys do in four years.”  


Harry raised a questioning brow at McGonagall, but she remained tight-lipped so he returned his attention to the rambling headmaster. “Get hurt a lot, did he?”  


Dumbledore smiled fondly into the middle-distance somewhere over Harry’s right shoulder. “Just before every holiday,” he said. His voice was delicate and rasping like paper. “We tried everything we could to put him on that train home, but somehow he would find the time to sustain some injury or other, enough to spend the first week of every holiday at Hogwarts.”  


“Albus,” McGonagall warned. “That’s plenty enough, thank you.”  


“The signs were there. So easy to see them in retrospect, and I often wonder what might have been different if-“  


The headmistress cast a silencing charm over the portrait. Dumbledore kept talking, a sad, misty look on his face. McGonagall fixed her eyes sternly on Harry, which seemed a bit unfair since he wasn’t the one spilling anyone’s tragic backstory all over the place. “Not a word.”  


Harry nodded. “Of course,” he answered earnestly. “I was just curious.”  


“Curiosity may have killed the cat,” McGonagall said slowly, leaning forward to emphasise the importance of her words. “However I should be very much more concerned about what it might do to you, should you reveal any information that Severus Snape would prefer remained hidden.”  


Harry gulped, remembering Snape’s threats to the Sirius impersonator yesterday. “Right, yeah. Of course. My lips are sealed.”  


McGonagall sat back with a particularly feline satisfied smile. “Good. Now, why don’t you tell me about this motorcycle…”  


-*-  


On Monday evening, having busily drawn, talked and tired himself through the day, Harry sat in his office to write up everything he’d learnt since Friday.  


He’d have gone home to do it, but the house was empty and depressing, and he liked the smell of the workshop.  


He made a bullet list:  


* Absolutely bloody brutal, still hates Sirius, possibly doesn’t hate me as much as I thought
  


* Favourite potion: Queen’s Tincture. Useless, made of horrible things but pretty in the end??
  


* Slytherin kids these days really need to up their game, clearly the new head of house isn’t doing a good job
  


* Friends with Poppy for a long time, big BFF vibe
  


* Hated going home - sets precedent for Dumbledore being totally useless at knowing when students are living in rubbish situations
  


* Abuse? Bad enough he’d hospitalise himself for a week rather than leave Hogwarts
  


* Likes sweets
  


* Apparently he’s a really private guy, who knew?!
  


* Still brews for Poppy confirmed
  


* Not just hates snakes, possibly afraid of them
  


* Dumbledore weirdly pleased that we’re ‘friends’, borderline creepy
  


He supposed that he was slowly fleshing out the full picture, though there still wasn’t anything tangible to hold on to. So far, all he had was the general impression of a boy who had a lot of shit thrown at him, growing up to be a man who threw a lot of shit at everyone else. Hardly a unique story - although Snape had come out of it a pretty unique man.  


-*-  


“Wanna take her for a test drive?” Ron asked, pushing the bat bike past Harry into the courtyard. Millicent walked alongside, bending over every few seconds to check this or that last-minute thing with a frown.  


Harry took a fresh look at the bike. With the wings folded away, he had to admit that it looked very cool. He’d known it would, of course, but it was good to see his design come to life so perfectly once again. He could only hope that any magazine photoshoots would be done with the wings out of sight. It was too much to hope for, he knew.  


“Nah I’m good,” he answered. “Still a bit shaken up after the accident yesterday.”  


“Mate, you told me you don’t even remember it,” Ron argued, at the same time as Millicent said “I can’t believe you drove that thing to _Scotland_.”  


Ron kicked out the stand to hold the bike up and walked to the coat rack, selecting a pair of goggles and a helmet, then rooted about in his coat. “I can’t believe how useless you are sometimes.” He pulled out a glass ball the size of his fist and held it out to Harry. Red mist curled inside. “Here. If you’re just gunna sit about and mope all day, ‘Mione asked me to take her Remembrall Plus over to the Ministry and I was going to do it while you were out.”  


“I do have work, you know,” Harry said. “Those designs don’t appear out of thin air.”  


Ron raised his brows knowingly. “Tell me that in March, when we have four projects on the go and you’re drawing your arse off thirty a day.”  


Fine. “I wanted to see Hermione anyway,” Harry grumbled, and swiped the ball out of Ron’s hand.  


Hemione’s office was dark and windowless, but she made up for it with manically cheerful decorations. The walls were painted a shade of bright yellowish cream she had probably read about in some mental health or productivity periodical, and the chairs looked comfortable and homey. Two lamps gave off white light in contrast to the orange candlelight still used throughout most of the building.  


Her desk was strewn with half-organised piles of paper in a system far too complex for Harry to understand, though he knew her too well to believe it was the disorganised mess it seemed.  


As he stepped out of the cramped floo, brushing away the ash on his robes, Hermione leapt up to give him a hug. He held her back tightly and let out a content sigh. A hug was good every now and then, even if it gave him a mouthful of uncontrollable curly hair.  


Hermione tapped his shoulder. “Everything alright?” She asked concernedly.  


“Yeah, yeah,” he replied, wrinkling his nose and stepping back. “Just nice. Ron doesn’t really do hugs - at least, not with me.”  


Hermione smiled and touched his arm. “You should go to the Burrow. I’m sure Molly would oblige.”  


Merlin, but Molly Weasley gave good hugs. Best in the world, hands down, even better than Hagrid. But there was a price… “She’d try to marry me off again.”  


“You should just tell her you’re not interested in witches,” Hermione said. Harry realised then that he hadn’t actually told her that, which was a bit of an oversight. Apparently she thought so too, because her shoulders slumped and she gave him the puppy eyes. “Oh, Harry. Why didn’t you say anything? Surely you didn’t think I’d be pants about it.”  


He’d got off lightly with Ron, but there was no avoiding the conversation with his other best friend. “It’s not that. You’re great.” He scratched a hand through his hair, trying to find the right way of saying he’d been planning on never going out with anyone ever again just to avoid the inevitable newspaper drama, but without it sounding sad or pathetic. “I didn’t think about it at all. I still don’t, really. It’s not you.”  


She accepted the excuse, probably because he never had any good ones anyway. “Here, why don’t you sit down? I’ll have some tea brought down.” She plonked him into an over-cushioned chair and disappeared out the door for a minute. The room fell strangely still without her, but when she returned it seemed to come to life. She had that effect on places - or rather, the people in them. She made a space better, brighter, just by existing in it.  


Hermione sat at her desk, and Harry had a moment of deja vu sitting across from her. Not that she was anything like Headmistress McGonagall. “So, have you got your eye on anyone?” she asked, relieving him of the belief that he could just get on with his life as normal now that he was out.  


Hesat back and threw his hands in the air. “Merlin, ‘Mione. I just told you I don’t think about it.” What was it with her and Ginny? They seemed to think more about him being gay than he did. “I can’t be bothered with all the fuss.”  


“You don’t think about it at all?” she asked skeptically. “Not even if a handsome guy comes into your workshop and asks for a… _full service_.” She dropped her voice at the end, stressing the euphemism.  


Harry lowered his arms and tapped the arm of his chair in a quick, nervous rhythm. “If someone came in for a service, I’d get an invoice slip and then think about cajoling Ron into doing some bloody work.”  


Hermione sighed. “Come on, are you not interested in anyone at all?”  


“There are only two people in the world who I can stand to hang out with for any length of time, and they’re married to each other,” he said, hoping to earn brownie points with flattery. He should have known better - Hermione was unflatterable.  


“Surely you have a type,” she pushed. “Harry, we’re friends. That means I get all the gossip so I can lord it over Ginny when we go to lunch. She scored points over me because you didn’t think to tell me such an important thing about yourself. Don’t you feel bad for me at all?”  


“No,” Harry answered instantly. This wasn’t his first guilt trip. He sat back and crossed a foot over his knee. “And don’t gossip about me, it’s weird.”  


She dropped her chin into her hand, leaning on her desk, and intensified the puppy eyes. Damn her, and Ginny as well.  


“I don’t have a type!” Harry insisted. She continued to stare. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Fine. I don’t know. Tall.”  


“Everyone says that,” Hermione responded.  


Harry shrugged helplessly. What else could he say? This would never be over unless he thought of something. “That’s ‘cause tall guys are… you know, good. Or whatever.” Wow, this was going great so far. “I guess I prefer longer hair. I don’t know. Just, someone who’s independent and private enough that they’d never sell me out, but caring enough that they’d, like… Just be a good boyfriend, or whatever. Are we done yet? Can we be done n-“ Harry stopped, scowling at her hand half-hidden behind a stack of papers.  


Hermione covered the notepad with her hand quickly, eyes wide with innocence.  


“Are you writing a list?” Harry asked incredulously.  


“No..?” Hermione replied, the word trailing off into uncertainty.  


Harry accio’d the notepad, glanced at it and then turned it back to face her. “Yeah? Then why does it literally say _Shopping List_ at the top of the page?”  


She accio’d the notepad back with the offended air. “It’s the only one I had to hand.”  


The tea arrived, saving her from Harry’s angry response. Not that he would usually let something as inconsequential as tea stop him, but this batch happened to be delivered by a very naked house elf and so had slightly more impact than he was used to. The only garment the elf wore - letting Harry know that he was a free elf in more than the obvious sense - was a pair of knickers worn on his head like a hat, his oversized ears poking through the leg holes. No loincloth. Harry looked away quickly, and then decided to make eye contact with Hermione until the elf was gone, just to intensify and share the embarrassment.  


“So that’s a thing,” he said once the elf was gone. It broke the tension, at least. And he didn’t want to stay mad at Hermione anyway - what purpose would it serve? Thinking of purpose, his mind turned to his current mission. “What do you think about Snape?” Harry asked.  


Hermione’s eyebrows shot up. “As a boyfriend?”  


“As a person! Jesus.” Harry hardly needed that image in his head, did he. Not after seeing the man in tight trousers, with a few buttons of his shirt open.  


Hermione picked up her notepad with a mock thoughtful look. “Well, he is taller than you. Independent. Private. Loyal.”  


“But not caring,” Harry said, referring to the last point on the list. “So go on then, what do you think? I’m designing him a bike and I’m a bit stumped.”  


Hermione considered the question, stirring her tea. “I like to think the best of people, but he really was a bit of a bastard,” she began. The teaspoon clinked against her saucer as she put it down. “I suppose I should forgive him for that considering everything he went through, however as a teacher he acted deplorably. He failed a duty of care to his students, bullied and harassed them, and unashamedly threw his house bias in their - our - faces at every opportunity.”  


“Damn, tell it like it is,” Harry replied. After Millicent and the Hogwarts lot bent over backwards to speak well of Snape, it was a weird shock to hear someone as smart and forgiving as Hermione express such a strong dislike for the man. It didn’t make her wrong, though.  


“I’ve heard he’s not so bad these days,” she admitted. “He never wanted to be a teacher, I get that, but he was petty, unpleasant and frankly awful at the job. I simply cannot forgive someone who tried so hard to ruin the education of so many children.”  


Harry nodded slowly. Of course it would come down to his teaching prowess, for Hermione. “Can’t argue,” Harry said.  


“Excellent book though,” Hermione added, more energetically. “Very funny.”  


“What book?” Harry asked. The only one he knew about was a potions manual, and he could hardly imagine that being funny.  


“The Apathicary,” Hermione answered. She seemed to think he should know it by name, and when he clearly didn’t, she rolled her eyes. “Harry, it was a bestseller for weeks, how have you not read it?”  


“I read.” Harry said defensively, in preemption of Hermione realising that he did not, in fact, read anything. Apart from motorcycle magazines.  


She rose out of her chair, gave him a disbelieving look - at the lie, or possibly at the truth behind it - and stepped determinedly up to her bookshelf. “Snape,” she murmured, crouching to check the lower shelves. “Randall, Riddell, Rover, Rusk, Rybek, Sabein, Sagg… S’jar, Skinner, Skinter, Skunter, Slackmonia… Smith, Smoulder, Smyth, Snape!” Triumphantly, she pulled out a thin tome and held it up for Harry to see. The cover was dark purple, and a golden cauldron was embossed on the front.  


Harry accio’d it. _THE APATHICARY_ , said a title along the spine. There was no text on the cover, and he had to read the publishing details page in order to find Snape’s name. He flipped through the pages, but it looked just like any other potions book. “What’s funny about it?”  


“Oh, just the way he describes things. There’s a dry, very British style of humour in there,” Hermione responded. “You can borrow it, if you like.”  


Harry shrunk it and tucked it into a pocket. “Thanks, I think I will.”  


-*-  


_This Is Just To Say - William Carlos Williams  
_ _I have eaten  
_ _the plums  
_ _that were in  
_ _the icebox  
_ _and which  
_ _you were probably  
_ _Saving  
_ _for breakfast  
_ _Forgive me  
_ _they were delicious  
_ _so sweet  
_ _and so cold_  
-  


Harry frowned, half-closed the book to check the cover, and then flipped a few pages forwards. Yes, it did seem to be the correct volume. There was nothing to explain this weird poem in the front though. He read it again just in case, but there didn’t seem to be anything more to it.  


The contents page was next, and the layout reminded him more of a cookbook than the textbooks he’d trudged through back at school. _15 Minute Remedies_ was the first section, then _A Study In Taste Augmentation_. Below that were a few bullet-point sub headings. _Fruity; Puddings; Prank Flavours; Tastelessness_. The next section title was _Ingredient Preparation Cheatsheet_.  


Harry leafed through to the correct page and found a fold-out chart illustrating the differences between chopped, sliced, finely sliced, crushed, powdered, cracked… He felt cheated, suddenly, that no one had shown him anything like this during potions classes at Hogwarts. Instead they’d been told to just do it, then punished for being wrong until - by some wild game of chance - they eventually got close enough to pass. Hermione was right; Snape had been a piss-poor potions teacher.  


The next few pages were filled with more specific notes on technique and explanations for why one might choose to chop rather than slice a particular root for a particular potion. Harry skipped to the ending summary of the section:  


_If in doubt, simply follow this easy to remember phrase: “Roots are sliced unless rotting, bulbs are crushed unless shooting. Shoots and fungi are chopped unless the moon is waxing and you wore a burgundy shirt the day before your wedding, though if you are unmarried then fungi must be finely sliced with a knife of polished obsidian gifted by a dog at five past two in the morning and if you are still reading this, please remember: the vast majority of the population is made up of idiots, therefore by balance of probability you are almost definitely one. Do not think yourself clever. Follow the recipe - a greater mind than yours conceived of it."_  


Harry couldn’t help but smirk, even knowing that he was pretty high on Snape’s list of people who were idiots. He skimmed through the recipe pages. The cookbook feel continued here. Each page had a title, then a brief description or back story, ingredients list and finally instructions. Some of the potions had drawings to accompany them.  


_Mustard-Up: with a seven minute brewing time, this home alternative to pepper-up is perfect for parents on the go, especially those who strongly dislike their spawn and don’t mind a bit of crying. Avoid contact with eyes, ears, nose, mouth, genitalia, hair, clothing, skin, nails, and external- and internal organs. Not suitable for those above, below or precisely the age of seventy three.  
_

_Mendaciumixture: identical in taste, texture, viscosity and colour to veritaserum, but with the opposite effect. Useful for confounding legal authorities and dark lords alike. I would advise in both cases that you do not get caught - though if you must choose one or the other, go for the dark lord. Torture may feel endless, but Azkaban is for life._  


Harry found the Queen’s Tincture about two thirds of the way through, in a section titled Useless Nonsense. He sat up straighter to read the page.  


_Queen’s Tincture: One must be mad as a royal to consider purchasing many of the items in this ingredient list, and madder still to put them together in the same cauldron. There is no stench so foul, no vision so sickening as this potion brewing. Every step, from the first slice of the knife onwards, only compounds the evil nature of this vile concoction; it may seem at each stage utterly irredeemable, both a victim of its own creation and a perpetrator of ill deeds upon your senses. With the addition of one simple flower however, it is transformed - and every detestable, disgusting minute until then is completely necessary in order to create this change. It is one of the most beautiful potions known to wizardkind.  
_

_I hope that it may serve as a reminder to others like myself: the evils of your past cannot be removed, yet there is no soul beyond redemption that seeks it._  


Harry puffed his cheeks and blew a steady stream of air, then flipped through the rest of the book to find another poem at the end:  


-  


_Green - D. H. Lawrence  
_ _The dawn was apple-green,  
_ _The sky was green wine held up in the sun,  
_ _The moon was a golden petal between.  
_ _She opened her eyes, and green  
_ _They shone, clear like flowers undone  
_ _For the first time, now for the first time seen._  
-  


He snapped the book shut, placed it on his desk and stared at it. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all.  


-*-  


“Uh, hey,” Harry said, clutching his glass tight as he approached Snape’s table right in the corner of the room.  


The man looked up at him, eyes dark and intense. Harry found himself seeking out the honey-coloured flecks in them. “Good evening,” Snape said. A perfectly normal greeting, but Harry jumped at the sound. He flushed in embarrassment while Snape just carried on watching. He was used to Harry acting like an idiot.  


Merlin, he was a jumbled mess, so much so that it took him a few seconds to realise that Snape was waiting for him to sit. He put his whiskey down with a clumsy clatter and pulled out a chair. “Hey.” Damn, he’d already said that. “Again.”  


Snape frowned at him. “As I may previously have expressed, any expectations of your conversational prowess are quite low, however I do feel compelled to ask whether you are suffering from… something? Are you well?”  


Honestly, Harry didn’t know. “Yeah, I’m fine. How… how are things with you?”  


The weirded-out look didn’t leave Snape’s face, and Harry felt a sudden sense of kinship. He was weirded out with himself too, because ever since he read that bloody book last night, he’d been thinking about Snape. About how different he was - no, not different. The same, but more. He was more of a person than Harry could have suspected. He was an entire person, not just the bundle of interactions and memories in Harry’s head.  


“I see that your aversion to agendas continues, Potter. I too am fine.”  


“Harry,” Harry corrected. “You said you’d call me Harry.”  


Snape’s lip curled into a sneer. “I most certainly did not. You gave me permission to do so.” He sipped his drink. Some wizards a few tables over groaned loudly around their board game. ”What reason could I have for acting so familiarly?”  


Harry scratched his hand through his hair, pulling back his fringe in a way that revealed his glamour-reddened scar. Snape’s eye followed the movement. “It’s hardly familiar, is it, just normal. Everyone calls me Harry, because that’s my name.” He paused, unsure of how to explain to Snape what he was thinking. “I’m not my dad, you know? I don’t want to be, either. I’m just… me. Just Harry.” Why did it bloody matter? He didn’t want Snape of all people calling him by his first name, anyway.  


He glanced down at his drink. The whiskey clung, slightly raised against the ice cubes in his glass, golden and enticing. He bit the inside of his lip.  


Fine. Maybe he wanted Snape to call him Harry. Maybe he wanted to hear his name spoken in that voice. Maybe he didn’t want to feel like Snape looked at him and saw James Potter. Urgh, this was the worst. How could this have happened?  


“I am aware,” Snape replied quietly, then someone passed their table and they both looked sideways, watching the threat to their privacy until it was gone. Their eyes met again. “You are quite another type of Potter altogether. Harry.”  


Yep, that was it. Smooth, silky, smoky. _Harry_. He could listen to it all evening… Damn.  


He knew what was going on here. Though Harry hadn’t exactly been a friend to the part of his brain that handled all the gay stuff, he wasn’t blind. Hell, half the reason he’d agreed to Heathcote’s request was his attraction to the man - until they’d met in person, and the illusion had been shattered.  


He should talk to Hermione again, he realised. He did have a type after all, and it was grumpy bastards - and while Heathcote had turned out to be a poor imitation, Snape was the real deal. Snape was Harry’s type. Oh, God. Merlin. Nothing could be worse than this. He had to leave.  


“Pardon?” Snape asked, and Harry rewound through his memories to find out what he’d said.  


“ _Do you want to come round mine?_ ”  


Harry backpedalled furiously. Stupid brain, stupid body. He shook his head, forcing a smile. He didn’t care which one, any of his masks would do so long as Snape couldn’t see the truth. He fumbled for a believable lie. “On Saturday, I mean. Instead of meeting here, c-come to my house. Check out the bikes, ride a few. It’d help my research since you’re not sure what kind you’d like.” Merlin, what was he saying? He didn’t want Snape at his house. “I think it’d be more useful than talking about it.”  


“I should think that anything would be more useful, when the alternative is a conversation with you,” Snape responded drily. The boardgaming wizards cheered. Harry ignored them.  


“So you’ll come?” he asked. It was totally absurd that his heart felt so tightly held in this moment. The seconds between asking and knowing, his entire being on pause. Waiting.  


Snape frowned. “Of course,” he said. “Anything to save us from having to speak to one another.”  


-*-  


“No you talk to him,” Millicent hissed, just outside Harry’s office door. Harry supported his chin on his hand and watched the shadowy forms of his slouching employees on the other side of his see-who’s-knocking enchantment.  


“I tried! He said he’s fine,” Ron argued. So that’s what Ron had been up to. Very weird at lunchtime - hanging around, giving Harry lots of sideways looks and asking repetitive questions.  


Harry spelled the door open, causing Ron to fall inside. Millie had her wits about her and managed to steady herself by quickly throwing her hand against the frame. Her palm whacked loudly against the wood at almost the same moment that Ron’s face hit the floor. “I am fine,” Harry told them. He looked down at his notes, saw all the doodled hearts and quickly covered them up. “Totally fine,” he reiterated.  


“Right.” Millie said. She smoothly transitioned her panicked pose into a more casual one, leaning against the door frame instead of being supported by it. Her expression was unconvinced.  


“Harry, I haven’t seen you like this in years,” Ron said, getting up and brushing off his knees. He sat down clumsily in the spare chair and cast a quick eye over Harry’s notes. Harry resisted the urge to hide them even more.  


“Like what?” he asked. There was nothing wrong with him. Other than the fact he was mindlessly doodling hearts. He’d never considered himself the type for that kind of behaviour. At least none of them had initials or little arrows struck through them.  


Ron scratched his cheek and frowned. “Mopey,” he replied after a moment. “Half the time your head’s in the clouds, and the other half it’s like you’re waiting for the guillotine to lop it off.”  


That was a pretty good description for how Harry felt, to be fair. “It’s nothing,” he said dismissively, sitting back in his best impersonation of a totally cool person with no burning, shameful secret to hide.  


A slow smile bloomed on Millicent’s face. Harry recognised a Ginny-like twinkle in her eye only a second before she opened her mouth. “He fancies someone,” she said.  


Harry didn’t know until that moment that it was possible to choke on his own breath. He coughed to cover the surprise.  


“Don’t be daft,” Ron told her, saving Harry the need. He turned back to Harry, leaning forwards with an intent expression. “It’s Snape, isn’t it?”  


Harry’s heart clenched again. He really wasn’t going to survive the conversation much longer if it carried on like this. “W-whaat?” he said, pulling a face. He was acutely aware of overdoing the denial, but couldn’t stop himself. “Snape? Really? Come off it, mate.”  


Millie watched.  


“He’s said something, hasn’t he?” Ron continued seriously, reminding Harry that it would never occur to his best mate that it might be Snape in any other sense than antagonism. “Got under your skin.”  


“We’re getting on fine,” Harry insisted, now paddling the other way to keep Ron off the scent. “In fact, he’s coming round mine tomorrow.”  


“Is he,” Millicent said. Damn. Her tone was just a little too interested for comfort.  


Ron groaned. “Mate, don’t let him know where you live. He’ll come over in the middle of the night and-“ Harry wished he would.  


“He’s not going to kill me,” Harry said, cutting off Ron’s words. He looked up at Millie, who had far too knowing a glint in her eye. “And you, not a word to Ginny or ‘Mione. I know about their little lunches.”  


She raised a shoulder innocently. “I’m not judging.”  


“There’s nothing to judge,” Harry said. She wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.  


Ron, who was usually terrifyingly adept at reading Harry’s mind, proved his uselessness in affairs of the heart. “Nothing to judge?” he squeaked, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder at Millie, who quickly schooled her face to neutrality. “He’s invited a man who hates him to his _house_ , where he _sleeps_. He’s going to be murdered.”  


“He won’t kil-“  


An owl swept into the room, making Harry jump back with his wand raised as it suddenly landed in front of his face. Its claws scraped loudly on the desk, then it shook out its feathers in a haughty manner and shoved aside Harry’s papers with a single solid sweep of its leg, before settling an imperious, unimpressed gaze on his wand. It proffered its letter almost like an afterthought, a gift to someone unworthy of its magnificent presence.  


“Bloody hell,” Ron said, which pretty much summed up what Harry thought as well.  


Harry took the letter cautiously, since he rarely saw owls this large or arrogant. Wouldn’t put it past the thing to bite his fingers off. “Ron, go grab some leftover ham from my sandwich, would you? Doubt Magnificent Mister Owl here would like boring old Eeylops.”  


The owl continued to stare right into Harry’s eyes as he broke the wax seal on the envelope: a discomforting power play. The parchment was thick and smooth, probably expensive. The wax was green, and the crest looked vaguely familiar. He unfolded the letter and read the name at the bottom before going back up to the contents: Draco Malfoy.  


As if one Slytherin wasn’t enough, what did another one want from him?  


“Whatsit?” Ron asked, slipping back into the chair and throwing a rather large slice of margarine-slathered ham towards the owl. It took no interest in this inferior meat, so the ham slapped onto Harry’s desk instead, smearing it with margarine.  


-  


_Harry,  
_

_Astoria and I would be most gratefully delighted if you’d come to dinner at the manor tonight. 7pm.  
_

_Aslan will await your response.  
_

_Regards,  
_

_Draco Malfoy._  


-  


Harry frowned. “Malfoy’s asking me round for tea tonight.” He glanced up at Millicent, but she only shrugged. Nothing on her radar, then.  


Ron leaned forward again. “Don’t do it,” he said. “They’re up to something. First you’re having Snape round yours tomorrow, now a bite at the Malfoys’? I’m telling you, those Slytherins are-“  


Millie bopped him lightly round the side of his head, cutting off whatever slander he’d been about to say concerning her old friend and head of house.  


Harry turned the letter over, found nothing on the back, and then reread the short message. “Why didn’t he just say what he wants?”  


“Because if you knew what he wanted, you wouldn’t go,” Ron replied, then ducked away from another expected blow, but it never came. Apparently Millie agreed with his assessment.  


“Comforting,” Harry murmured.  


“He’s gunna go,” Ron complained, rolling his eyes dramatically. “It’s like he’s learnt nothing.”  


“Don’t you have work to do?” Harry asked. He folded up the letter and pushed it back into the envelope, laying it flat on his desk. “Go on. Out of my office, the pair of you.”  


As the door clicked shut behind their slinking forms, Harry thought for a second that he’d got away with it. Ron disillusioned him of that notion with his inability to whisper at a volume suited to the word.  


“ _Did you see all those hearts?_ ”  


-*-  


“I, uh, like what you’ve done,” Harry said politely, waving a hand at the dining room around them. It was light and airy, nothing at all like the torture room it had been under Voldemort’s influence. “Very nice.” It was possibly the third time he’d said words to that effect, but then he wasn’t used to all this fancy dining stuff, being seated four empty seats away from the hosts with tall candle holders between them at eye level so that he had to lean sideways any time he wanted to see anyone’s face.  


Astoria offered a thin-lipped smile in response. She looked exhausted and pale, with deep red bags under her eyes. Her posture was good though - playing the part of the Malfoy wife, even as the blood malediction sapped her energy. Harry returned her smile as best he could. The silence was strained from all angles.  


Draco nodded absently, not seeming to realise that Harry had told them the same thing several times in the last twenty minutes. “Thank you, Harry.”  


He was strange. Muted. Out of everyone Harry had gotten reacquainted with recently, Draco was the one who had changed the most. He seemed almost like a doll, making Harry frown. It didn’t seem right - he’d seen Malfoy from a distance at a few functions over the years, and he’d seemed fine then. Not that they’d spoken directly or anything.  


Harry also noted with annoyance that it didn’t affect him in any way to have this young, handsome Slytherin say his name. But some ugly old, grumpy Slytherin, well that was positively titillating, wasn’t it? Harry. He wanted to hear it again. How was it possible to look forward to something so much, yet still dread it at the same time?  


When the food arrived, Harry was further dismayed to realise that it was a starter course. Possibly even a pre-starter aperitif, an _amuse bouche_. Merlin, he was going to be here for hours. He smiled at Astoria again, and she smiled back. Her eyes flicked sideways to meet her husband’s gaze, which made him smile in turn, which obligated Harry to smile at him as well. Smiles all round, and not a sound except for the gentle thuds of small plates landing on the soft white tablecloth.  


It felt as if hours had passed before the last course was offered. Harry commented yet again on the lovely decor, to no avail, and contemplated strangling himself with his silver-embroidered linen napkin. By the time dessert came around, he was more than ready to leave. Malfoy had been giving him sideways looks since the small bowls of cold soup. “Merlin, no thank you,” Harry said, raising a hand to ward off a tiny chocolate tart with some fancy red sauce swirled on top. He couldn’t hack even one more second in this awkward silence. “Got to watch my figure, you know?”  


Draco finally spoke up, after an eternity of looking like he was on the verge of saying whatever he’d invited Harry here to say. “A drink in my study, then?”  


So he wanted privacy. Harry glanced between Draco and Astoria but didn’t spot the signs of non-verbal communication he was used to seeing in Ron and Hermione. Raised eyebrows, widened eyes, kicks under the table. A bit unsophisticated for the Malfoys, he supposed.  


“Sure,” Harry replied, though the prospect of sitting in a room alone with this strange husk of Draco Malfoy was hardly appealing. Then again, it wasn’t as though he wanted to go home where he’d no doubt spend the entire night pacing and panicking about Snape’s arrival tomorrow. He should clean down and polish all the bikes, just in case. And declutter the workshop, maybe pressure-wash the floor a bit. Yup, he was definitely pulling an all-nighter...  


Draco rose stiffly, reminding Harry more of Lucius than the fluid, youthful Draco he’d once been enemies with. On their way out, he bent to kiss Astoria on the cheek and they shared an unexpectedly soft gaze before Draco straightened up. Loving. Harry supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Lucius and Narcissa had been very much the same - now happily retired to some sunny island far away from the horrible memories of home.  


Draco’s study was about the same size as Harry’s office, with a large window looking out over the grounds. It was already getting dark outside and the distant horizon glowed orange, casting long shadows. “Nice view,” Harry commented, taking in the distant countryside woods and fields. On the windowsill sat a selection of homey items - a child’s drawing, a souvenir-ish knick knack of a broom surfing the waves, and a poem in a picture frame:  


-  
_My childhood's home I see again,  
_ _And sadden with the view;  
_ _And still, as memory crowds my brain,  
_ _There's pleasure in it too.  
_ _O Memory! thou midway world  
_ _'Twixt earth and paradise,  
_ _Where things decayed and loved ones lost  
_ _In dreamy shadows rise,  
_ _And, freed from all that's earthly vile,  
_ _Seem hallowed, pure, and bright,  
_ _Like scenes in some enchanted isle  
_ _All bathed in liquid light._  
-  


“Snape asked you to make him a bike?” Draco asked, pulling Harry’s attention back with a snap. So the weird circular small talk was finally over.  


“Yeah,” Harry answered. Probably too quickly, but he was relieved to have something real to talk about. “How’d you find out about it?”  


Draco settled into a cushioned chair behind his desk. “I suggested it to him.”  


Oh. “But you’ve never been to the shop,” Harry said, frowning. “Why would you do that?”  


Draco didn’t answer, and instead accio’d two crystal tumblers from a nearby cabinet. “Whiskey?” he asked. Harry nodded, still standing by the window.  


Draco opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a toy train, which wasn’t exactly what Harry had been expecting. Then he produced several cars, a small doll and a dragon figurine - Hungarian Horntail - before finally finding a bottle. He swept the toys back into the drawer and squished them down until it could close again. “Children, hm?” he said, in answer to Harry’s unspoken question and avoidance of his spoken one. “Who in their right mind would have them?”  


“Not me,” Harry said tightly.  


“No secret girlfriend you’re hiding from the press, then?” Draco asked, though he didn’t sound genuinely interested. The cork made a satisfying sound as he pulled it out of the bottle, then he poured two generous measures.  


Harry took the first glass and sat down in the chair opposite Draco. It was comfortable: plush, but not so much that he felt like he was drowning in cushions. This was his third time of the week sitting on the visitors’ side of a desk. “No witches for me, I’m afraid.”  


This seemed to genuinely surprise Draco, which meant his intention hadn’t been to set up Harry and Snape together - which was a shame, because Harry would very much have liked someone else to blame for his current predicament. He might just blame Draco, anyway. “Wizards, then?”  


“Not at the moment,” Harry answered. Never. It was supposed to be never. Surely, he wasn’t really considering..? Yes, he realised. Yes, he was considering actually doing something about it. Damn. “Sorry, was this about Snape?”  


“He’s miserable,” Draco answered.  


Harry sipped his drink. He knew it must be tidy stuff, but he wasn’t any good when it came to the fine tastes of things. “Is he?” he asked after a few seconds, when Draco failed to elaborate on his point.  


Draco nodded slowly. “He’s been a solitary man for most of his life,” he added. Then nothing else.  


“Uh, yes he has,” Harry prompted.  


Draco frowned down into his glass, making Harry wonder how much more conversation was happening in his blond head than was coming out of his mouth. “He may give the impression that he enjoys being alone.”  


Harry waited again, but that was it. “He does.”  


“I think he’s lonely. Deeply, profoundly lonely.”  


Lonely. What was Harry supposed to say to that? Snape must be, he supposed. The man had few friends so far as Harry knew, and he doubted they met all that often. Harry couldn’t imagine being that alone all the time. “I guess so,” he replied carefully. “But, I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just… What’s that got to do with the bike?”  


Draco finally looked up, then rolled his eyes. For a second he looked like his younger self. “The bike is irrelevant, just an excuse. It’s about _you_.”  


Merlin, maybe he was setting them up after all. “Me? What can I do about it?”  


“Whatever you did for Millicent,” Draco answered, shrugging to suggest that he didn’t know or particularly care about the details. His bony fingers lifted the tumbler in a casual, languid manner. “She was miserable. Then she made friends with you. Now she’s not.”  


If anyone was miserable here, it was Draco himself.  


“I only gave her a job,” Harry argued. “I can’t hire every lonely Slytherin, you lot are so repressed I’d have to open workshops all over the world to house you all.”  


Draco ignored his jibe. “It’s not just the job. She’s happier. She has friends and- do not ever repeat this where a weasel might misconstrue my intent - family, of a sort.”  


Harry sighed. “She made those herself, it wasn’t me. She’s a lovely person. I might have invited her through the front door, but she’s the one who made herself at home.”  


“Invite Snape through the door then,” Draco answered, as if that was the simplest thing in the world. Harry’s mouth dried at the intensity of his stare. “And then do whatever it takes to make him happy.”  


“I’ll give him a bag of pear drops and then throw myself down the stairs, shall I?” Harry said drily.  


A faint smile graced Draco’s face. “That would do it,” he replied.  


Harry huffed. How to make Severus Snape happy. It all came cycling back to the same impossible question, time and time again - and he was buggered if he knew the answer.  


-*-  


As he had predicted, Harry slept not a single wink that night. Not that it did him much good. No matter how much time he spent tidying the garage, he simply didn’t have enough storage space to hide away all his parts - precious, precious objects which were not junk at all, and thus could not be recklessly hidden round the back of the building until Snape was gone, especially since it was due to rain.  


He spent a solid four hours cleaning and polishing his bikes until they shone brighter than a lumos solem, and another hour casting cleaning charms all over the garage and his driveway. It wasn’t until he looked up, wiping his brow, that he saw the sun rising over the roofs of Grisdon Bassett - a small rural town that sprawled over the nearby hill.  


He cast tempus: seven in the morning.  


Harry wiped a bleary eye with the back of his hand and trudged towards the house to put the kettle on. It was only a small cottage, although his friends had insisted he could afford better. What would he do with a big house, though? He’d bought it for the spacious driveway, the pretty back garden and the stables he’d converted into a long garage.  


The front door led directly to a cosy living space. Cosy being a nice word for small and cramped. The walls were stone and the windows were miniscule. Dark, narrow wooden beams ran along the low ceiling. Ron called it claustrophobic, but then he kept scraping the top of his head on the beams so of course he’d think so. The fireplace was wide and squat, topped with a heavy oak mantel built into the wall, above which leaned a large mirror which Hermione had told him would create a false sense of light and space. His hairbrush sat in front of it, between a photograph of his parents and one of his godson, Teddy.  


Three stable-style doors in the wall to his left led to the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. Each of those was tiny and cramped, but he didn’t spend much time in them so it didn’t matter to him. He liked small spaces, anyway.  


On entering the kitchen, he saw that the table was currently covered with small metal flowers, piles of shavings, tools and wire. A soldering iron sat unplugged, hanging out of a cardboard box full of offcuts from the workshop: a project from a few months ago which he hadn’t put away yet because he was still lying to himself that he’d come back to finish it. He filled the kettle from the squeaky tap, then leaned tiredly against the humming fridge to watch it boil.  


What was he going to do once Snape arrived? There was still ages to go yet, and he knew he should spend the time napping, but trying would be useless. His brain was being too loud and jumbled for that.  


He pressed his palms against his forehead and breathed in deeply. It didn’t relax him at all. He fancied Severus Snape. He’d been trying to avoid thinking about it, but even so he’d only grown more certain of it. He fancied his old teacher, who was a sarcastic bastard with a big nose and uneven teeth and a sexy voice, and who was too old for him and not at all interested, according to everyone Harry had talked to at the pub and the man himself.  


Snape wasn’t interested in him. So he should not pursue this. It would be stupid and reckless.  


He groaned. Stupid and reckless were literally the criteria for things Harry Potter couldn’t resist doing. _At least I won’t live to see the aftermath_ , he thought tiredly as the kettle shook itself to boiling.  


With a fresh cup of tea, Harry stumbled his way to the two seater and put his feet up on the coffee table. It was strewn with sheets of newspaper and paint-hardened brushes from some work thing or other he’d brought home a couple weeks back.  


His life felt full of problems right now, and they were all coming from the same source: Snape. For starters, the man was the sexiest ugly guy ever, and bitingly, drily funny. Unexpectedly humble in his writing, and loyal to his mates. Capable of burning someone so hard they combusted into ash on the spot, yet evidently there was something soft hidden in there too. Harry yearned to get to know that version of Snape better.  


He knew it was absurd. How long had it been, two weeks? It shouldn’t be a thing - and yet he’d never felt attracted to someone this strongly before. Maybe he’d made a mistake in keeping himself off the market for so long. His libido was coming back with a vengeance.  


And even without all that stuff, his brain was running around screaming in his skull because he only had one more week to draw the design, and he still didn’t even know what bike he was using for a base. He didn’t know what it would look like, nor have any idea what theme he was going for. Like a fresh sheet of smooth Bristol paper, his mind was still totally blank.  


He summoned his work satchel and pulled out the Snape sheets. He’d added quite a bit to them by now. Notes about the man’s possibly traumatic childhood, injuring himself at Hogwarts rather than going home. The fact that he liked hard boiled sweets - Harry had a bag of rhubarb and custards in his satchel, just in case the need arose. The weird poetry, and being afraid of snakes. Everything he knew so far.  


Harry took out some fresh paper and began doodling, though his eyes felt itchy and dry.  


Not knowing what else to do, he drew the Snape of his memories - revealing his mark to Karkarov; the first potions lesson; saving Harry in the forest; the doe patronus; verbosely telling not-Sirius to fuck off at the pub. Harry tried to draw not only from his own memory of those times, but from Snape’s perspective, from inside his head. Then he worked backwards, drawing a much younger Snape lying in the infirmary, pain and relief warring in the slant of his shoulders because he’d avoided going home for another few days, but his sanctuary wouldn’t last long. The dread.  


The terror of Nagini’s bite, and the teardrop of memories they’d both believed would be his last act on earth - filled with fear, regret and a deep desire to be understood. For someone to know he wasn’t what he’d been pretending to be all those years.  


Killing Albus at the tower. His confidante, his closest friend, and one of the very few people who cared for him. Done in order to fulfill a promise and protect a boy under his care, his godson. Would Harry kill someone in Teddy’s place? He wasn’t sure. He was done with killing, but surely it was better for Harry to do it than someone young and innocent?  


Better for Snape to have killed the headmaster, than young Draco. Already tarnished, already hated, already hating himself. What was this one horrible, painful, impossible thing when added to the acts he’d already committed?  


He drew Snape as headmaster on the day Harry returned to root him out. He drew Snape standing in the clean front office at Winguardian’s, half turned away as he contemplated Harry’s offer. He drew the bowl of sherbet lemons on Dumbledore’s desk - were they there because Snape liked them, or did Snape like them because they were there?  


-*-  


Harry was hoping that Snape would arrive on his bike, but the weather was getting a bit miserable so he wasn’t surprised to hear the man apparate into the driveway instead.  


“Great timing on Autumn,” Harry called in greeting as he stepped outside, squinting up at the gloomy sky. He spotted Snape, and it took everything in his power not to trip onto his face. Leather jacket. Damn.  


Snape spun to face Harry with his hand angled in the familiar pose of someone prepared to drop their wand out of their sleeve, then froze. “Harry,” he said, relaxing - Severus Snape, _relaxing_ at the sight of Harry Potter.  


Harry walked over, but stopped as he realised he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do once he got close. He turned quickly towards the garage, aware that it would be all too easy to stare. He’d just have to not look at Snape at all. “Hope you don’t mind the weather. I quite like riding in the rain, but there’s always charms.” He pushed the button for the garage door, and it juddered up with a loud mechanical whine, slowly revealing his collection. “Here they are.”  


He couldn’t help but admire the spread, even if he was the one who’d created it. The bikes stood in a fan facing the door, all gleaming and polished. It made his blood race to see them like this. The rest of the room was a jumbled mess of bits but he’d already decided there wasn’t much to be done about it.  


Harry glanced to where Snape stood staring a few steps back. “Like what you see? Those two on the left are true originals, nothing of mine on them, the rest have some minor modifications.” Suddenly excited at the opportunity to talk someone through his collection, Harry rushed to the leftmost bike, a Triumph Trident, while gesturing for Snape to follow. “This is from the first year of production, super unpopular design and you can kind of understand why. Not very pretty,” he said. He stroked a hand over the seat, couldn’t help but grin. “I dunno, though. Sometimes knowing that something is so widely disliked by others makes it more worth loving.” Harry looked over the ridiculous shoebox fuel tank and the even more ridiculous muffler, then remembered himself and straightened quickly. He probably looked like an idiot - even so, he couldn’t help but enthuse over his bikes. “Can’t find ’em like this anymore - everyone was converting them into the Bonneville style, even the dealers themselves.”  


Snape was giving him a weird look, and Harry realised the man hadn’t yet spoken.  


“Sorry, I get carried away so easily. Did you want a cuppa or something?” Harry asked.  


“I’m quite fine,” Snape answered. Merlin, that drawl did things to him. It slithered down the back of Harry’s t-shirt, tickling his spine. Snape walked around the bike, moving on to the Bonneville. “And this?”  


Harry grinned. “Do you like it? Everyone loves a Bonneville so I feel compelled to keep a few around, but this one’s special. Late ‘59 model, see this paint?” He tapped the lower half of the fuel tank. “Azure blue, pretty special. Most of them were done in tangerine. And this grille badge, isn’t it gorgeous?” Harry knelt beside the bike to run his fingers over the gold-accented logo over the chrome grille. He’d polished it obsessively last night. Looking at it sparked electric excitement in his chest, reminding him of how much he loved what he did. This was it - the soul of his work. The soul of him.  


He ran Snape through the rest of the collection, showing off his modifications and the original features with equal joy. The last was a Brough Superior, possibly his favourite for winter riding. “Here, see the way the fender curves inward a bit at the edges? That’s my work. Collects dirt like nobody’s business, a right pain in the arse - but riding in the rain, it catches the water and twists it away in this beautiful arc behind you. I’ll ride this one, if you don’t mind, so you can see it. Best appreciated from further away. Just don’t ride too close behind me.” Harry straightened and rushed to the wall of keys, plucking the Brough’s disk off the peg. His collection was all kick-starts, but he’d added charms so that only the disk holder could get the things running. “What about you?”  


Snape had apparently been finding it difficult to keep his eyes on the bikes, adding to Harry’s nervous energy. He felt under scrutiny in a way he hadn’t experienced since his stint in auror training. “The first will be adequate,” Snape replied. The Trident.  


“You know my modifications are safe, right?” Harry said, only half teasing. Of course Snape had to go and choose one of the only bikes with none of Harry’s original handiwork, apart from the components required to make it fly. He wasn’t surprised.  


“It suits me well, I think,” Snape explained. “ _Widely disliked_.”  


Harry smiled, handing over the disk. “But worth loving?” Shit. He said that out loud, didn’t he? He turned away quickly, striding to the Trident for an unnecessary last-minute flight check. “Should be all good to go, I stayed up half the night checking them over.” Merlin. Bloody hell, this was well beyond his abilities to cope with.  


Snape appeared beside him, too close, and Harry stepped back. Snape appraised him. “From the bloodshot eyes, I assume you haven’t slept at all.”  


“You got me,” Harry replied sheepishly, looking away quickly. He felt jittery in twenty different ways at the same time. “Here’s the kickstart, you’ll need to do it since you have the key disk. Invisibility button’s hidden here, and this one’s for flying but I thought we could ride along the road a bit first if that’s cool with you?”  


Snape frowned. “I don’t have a muggle license.”  


“That’s fine,” Harry replied, looking over his shoulder out the garage door. He nodded to the field opposite. “That’s Grisdon Airfield right there, we won’t be on the road. It’s derelict and a bit roughed up now, but nothing to worry over. These are the safest bikes in Britain.”  


Snape swung a leg over the top of the bike and started it. The 3-cylinder engine growled to life with a sound Harry felt in his lungs. He tried not to look at Snape’s long legs, the leather jacket, or… well, everything. He tried not to look at the everything of Snape, because he was too bloody cool.  


Harry half-stumbled back over to the Brough Superior and climbed on, accio’ing his riding goggles off a shelf as Snape donned his own. “Follow me, I guess,” he shouted over the combined grumbles of two motorbikes.  


They pulled out of the garage into a misty drizzle. Harry crept forwards to the little country road and then took out his wand and revelio’d the secret entrance to the airfield. An overgrown, bramble-covered bank became a tidy little gate, which opened at a second wave of his wand. Snape followed him through, and they bumped their way over the tufty grass field towards a tarmac lane up ahead.  


Usually Harry would hurtle towards it, holding on to the bike as if it was a leaping rodeo bull, but he didn’t want to seem reckless in front of Snape so he kept a sensible pace, avoiding the roughest bits and not once trying to see if he could get himself airborne without magic.  


Once they got onto the tarmac however, he couldn’t resist twisting the throttle. Rain stung sharper against his cheeks as he sped up, and began to trickle down his neck inside the collar of his riding jacket. He grinned madly.  


Snape caught up, then started pulling ahead and it became a drag race of sorts. The straight was only a mile and a half - hardly long enough for the Brough to show just how superior it was - and Snape was determined, but Harry knew where all the potholes were. While he positioned himself perfectly on the strip, Snape was forced to swerve around gaps as they appeared.  


Harry wiggled his eyebrows at Snape as he pulled up alongside him, then laughed as the man bumped over a crack in the road. He clearly wasn’t used to riding his bike on the ground. Most wizards weren’t. The end of the runway was coming up fast anyway, so Harry gestured upwards, and Snape nodded.  


Harry didn’t share the man’s obvious relief to get up in the air - he loved the sensation of riding on the road. The bike moving under him in predictably unpredictable ways, the friction of the tyres and the feeling of dirt or gravel flicking against his leg as he went too fast round a bend. The suspension bouncing, and even slippery grass. He loved flying, sure, but it wasn’t half as tactile as riding the way it was meant to be done.  


He waited until Snape pulled up first, then accelerated towards the end of the runway. It was a game of chicken he played with himself - how close to the broken edge did he dare go? He’d ended up in a hedge twice because of it, but he didn’t go that far today. Just enough for the quick thrill, then he pushed the button and pulled up sharply, laughing at the rush of air past his ears and the horizon jerking away.  


He scanned the sky for Snape, found him already close to the swirling clouds and chased after him. Snape made up for his lack of grace on the ground with demonstrable skill in the air. Still not enough to keep Harry off his tail though.  


Harry entered the clouds, breathing shallowly through his teeth, and then swooped back down in front of Snape and slowed to match his speed. He rode as close alongside as he dared, the ends of their handlebars almost meeting. “Having fun?” he bellowed.  


He didn’t hear the response, and didn’t need to. Like him, Snape had chosen not to use a charm to stay dry, and water dripped down his face and jacket. His hair flew loose behind, except where it was pressed down by the strap of his goggles - but those were things Harry noticed only peripherally as he stared, because Snape was _grinning_.  


It was hardly a flattering grin, what with his uneven teeth and oversized nose, but Harry was so distracted by it he almost caused a collision. He jerked the handlebars quickly, twirling away in a mad loop that made his stomach bounce, and then rocketed back into the clouds to avoid the strengthening rain. A shadowy form appeared to his right, so he pulled up further. Seconds later, they burst out the top of the cloud together. Harry squinted against the bright sky, pulling back into a slow crawl. Bikes couldn’t hover still, unlike brooms, so he eased into a tight clockwise circle.  


The view was breathtaking.  


Snape shot ahead, not seeing at first that Harry had stopped, but within a minute he noticed and wandered back, hair whipping about in the wind, and demonstrated his skill further by joining Harry’s circle. Both front and back wheels almost touched as he slotted into the formation.  


Show off.  


“How’d you like the bike?” Harry shouted.  


“I’m warming up to it,” Snape replied. “And it’s keeping me warm in return.”  


Harry laughed. His hands were freezing, but his legs were nice and warm. They continued to turn in sync, each keeping half an eye on their front wheel as they spoke. “Enjoying the ride?”  


“How could I not?” Snape called back. A strand of hair whipped across his nose, but he didn’t seem to notice it. _When I ride, I am a free man_. “I’m unused to riding with company, but you’re not so awful.” _I suppose he wants to impress someone_.  


“If you’re hoping to inflate my head so much I float off into space, you’ll be disappointed,” Harry shouted. A large droplet of water tickled down the side of his nose. “The bikes have a failsafe, can’t get too high.”  


“Care to test it?” Snape dared. Their circle widened as he steered out a bit in challenge. Harry mirrored the movement, and with the extra safety of a little distance, he was able to lock eyes with Snape properly.  


They spun in a few more slow circles, getting faster and higher with each turn.  


Snape’s eyebrow twitched beneath his goggles, and then they were off. Instead of peeling away from the circle, they carried on spinning while pulling up towards the sky. They twirled up like a corkscrew, like DNA, like two snakes coiling, inseparable. Harry pressed his lips together and breathed shallowly through his nose, eyes half lidded against the blue sky and white clouds.  


His fingers were cold, but he didn’t risk letting go for even a moment to cast a warming charm, not until they got to the limit. He felt the safety charms start to press down on him, and pushed against them. The bike slowed, like sliding into jelly, just as he was beginning to feel faint. He pushed for just a second more, breathing in cold air and moisture, then as he exhaled he let go of the handlebars and trusted the safety charms to grip his legs tight.  


The bike turned slowly upside down, leaving him dangling, then pointed to the ground as he began to freefall back towards the rainclouds. Laughing, hands in the air as if he was on a rollercoaster, he shot through them. Wind snatched the laughter out of his mouth, drying his tongue and stealing his breath. White cloud burst into a view of the field quickly approaching - green grass, unruly hedges and the single long strip of crumbling grey road - but it wasn’t until rain started to batter his back that he grabbed the handlebars again. He leaned forwards, eyes on the smooth patch of tarmac he used for fast landings. It rose to meet him enthusiastically, a mirror of his own excitement.  


He bounced as the front wheel hit the ground, almost hitting his nose on the handlebars, but stabilised quickly. The track was soaked, and he skidded further than was ideal, muscles tense as he squealed towards a crumbling section of the tarmac. He came to a stop just short of a small pothole that would have sent him flying. His heart thundered, beating like a hippogriff’s wings battering the inside of his ribs. Cool sweat joined thick droplets of rain to glide down the back of his neck, and he breathed heavily through the massive grin splitting his face. He scanned the sky for Snape, who was landing at a more reasonable speed.  


The Triumph’s narrow wheels skidded over wet ground, spraying a mist of water all around, then Snape came to a halt in front of Harry. The rain turned to a squall all around them, filling the potholes with shiny puddles that reflected rippling patches of sky. It stung his face and neck, trickled through his hair, and bounced off his jacket.  


Harry pushed up his goggles, losing vision for a second as he scrambled to keep his glasses on his nose. “That was brilliant,” he exclaimed, catching and holding Snape’s gaze. Harry shut off his engine and kicked out the stand, then got off to shake out the tension in his legs. His body didn’t like the big drop nearly as much as his soul did.  


Snape wasn’t grinning again, but his chest matched the rhythm of Harry’s and his eyes wouldn’t have looked out of place on Dumbledore. He followed Harry’s lead by dismounting, and didn’t seem to mind the downpour flattening his hair and pouring a river down the front of his nose. “You’re a passable rider,” he said in an offhand tone that contrasted his flushed cheeks. He was the very image of excitement, and he couldn’t hide it. “A practitioner as well as an artist.”  


Harry walked to the Triumph and kicked down the stand Snape was looking for, a move that put him in arm’s reach of the man. “Was that a compliment? Did you just compliment me?” His heart was still hammering away and he felt giddy. A dangerous combination of adrenaline and sleeplessness.  


“A momentary lapse in judgement,” Snape answered. He didn’t move away, and Harry was quite aware - and hopeful - of what that might mean. He knew he was being an idiot thinking about it, but damn, he felt daring. After a ride like that, how could he not feel invincible?  


“And a smile. A compliment and a smile,” Harry continued, unable to stop himself from grinning again. “I think you might be losing your touch.”  


Snape’s eyes flicked quickly up and down with a rapid, nervous moment. “Losing my mind, I think.”  


“In a good way?” Harry asked. He shuffled a quarter-step forwards. Snape held his ground, shoulders tense. Unsure, Harry thought. Difficult to recognise the expression on Snape, but surely it was uncertainty. The thundering rain disappeared into mere background noise, a constant heavy patter to frame Harry’s pounding pulse.  


“Is there such a thing? I can think of nothing worse to lose than one’s mind.” Snape still had one hand on the bike’s handlebar, and now he gripped it tightly, white-knuckled.  


Harry dropped a mirroring hand onto the bike’s seat, still warm from the engine and Snape, but totally soaked already. He brushed his fingers along the piping. “I don’t know about that,” he said, trying for a sly sort of flirty smile. He hadn’t practiced it at all, so who knew what it looked like on the outside. He should have spent the morning practicing a new set of smiles in the mirror, not doodling. “If you’re to be believed, then I probably never had one to start with, and I seem to be doing fine don’t I?”  


“Not at all,” Snape replied tightly. “On the contrary, if you were indeed to believe me, then you are an utter catastrophe of a man.”  


Oh god, they were regressing. Subtlety was clearly not going to work - or Harry was bad at it. Probably that.  


He swallowed, courage lost to nerves. “Not to ruin the moment, but I just wanted to clarify… You know I’m coming on to you, yeah? Like-“ Harry waved a hand between their chests to indicate some vague form of togetherness.  


“Ah,” Snape replied.  


_Ah?_ Was that a good ah or a bad ah? _Ah I didn’t know, and I hate you and this is the worst, you imbecile?_ Having used up his supply of bravery/idiocy already, Harry just raised his eyebrows. This caused a trickle of water to flow down his temples, trickling into his ears. He shook off the droplets.  


“I was wondering if it might be another symptom of the mind-losing affliction,” Snape explained, while still failing to elaborate on whether or not Harry should carry on.  


“And...?” Harry prompted. Merlin, but he hated this bit. Not that he’d been in this position much - he hadn’t let himself be this vulnerable in years, possibly ever. He was balanced on a precipice - except that by the expression on Snape’s face, he thought he was the one facing a big fall instead. Harry knew he had to push or retreat, and his brain wasn’t wired for the latter. “Look, can I just- I’d like to kiss you. Would you also like that?”  


If there was any way to make this more awkward, Harry wasn’t aware of it.  


Snape finally stopped talking, stepped up and brushed his rain-wet lips lightly against Harry’s. Thus encouraged, Harry took hold of Snape’s jacket and pulled him in for more.  


Like releasing a dam, like nought to sixty in record time, Harry was overwhelmed by the feeling of kissing Snape. The chest pressing against his; tough leather under his fingers; their mouths moving together as rainwater battered them from above. Snape bit Harry’s lip, and he smiled, running his thumb down the metal zip of Snape’s jacket.  


Then Snape pulled back, a small frown tightening between his brows. Harry didn’t let him step away. This close, he could clearly see the honey-coloured flecks in the man’s dark irises. He could see all sorts of rubbish playing out behind them, too. “Stop thinking,” he said.  


Snape’s mouth twitched. “I must have, yes.”  


Harry kissed him briefly again, his chest fluttering. “Well whatever you do, don’t start again.” He slid Snape’s jacket zipper open smoothly and then reached inside, pulling the man close with a hand round his lower back. It was warm and dry, and Harry wanted to bury himself inside, protected from the rain. Snape jumped from the cold of Harry’s arm, making him smile even wider.  


Pressed so close like this, Harry’s brain realised with a jolt that this was a man. Not soft and pretty and squishy as he’d pretended he wanted for so long. Hard and bony and flat, as he’d been dreaming about without doing anything. It was real.  


Snape stepped forwards, pushing Harry against the bike. “This is incredibly ill-advised,” he said, so close they might as well have been kissing again. His voice did even more fantastic things to Harry at this distance.  


“That sounds like me,” Harry confirmed, tightening his arms around Snape’s waist with a grin. Merlin, why had he talked himself out of doing this stuff until now? Ginny was right, he should have come out years ago. He slid a hand down Snape’s back to his belt but ran out of courage before making it to the arse, and Snape nudged him backwards again until he was half sitting on the bike, feet wrapped around Snape’s calves to stop himself from falling backwards. “People who’ve lost their minds can’t be expected to act in well-advised ways,” he breathed.  


“Is that so, Harry?” Snape asked, lowering his head to Harry’s neck. Oh God. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”  


Harry was pushed back further, and with nothing to rest against but air he clawed at Snape’s back to stay on the bike. Snape’s hands pressed into the seat to either side of his hips, a proclamation that he wasn’t planning on helping with that particular predicament. Harry pressed his heels into the backs of Snape’s legs and used abdominal muscles he was sure he didn’t have to keep himself up. “Can I call you Severus yet?” he asked. Snape nipped at his throat, and Harry wobbled as his grip weakened in response.  


“You could have done so all along,” Snape answered into Harry’s throat. “I’m surprised you did as you were told for once.”  


Harry nudged Snape away with a twist of his neck, then kissed him before he could go too far. He just wanted to see the man’s face. “Severus.” Harry moved his legs further up Snape’s, bringing their hips closer together. A fresh spike of excitement coursed through him. “Severus.”  


“Making up for lost time?” Severus asked, and bent to kiss him again, then pulled back suddenly with a grimace. “As loath as I am to rid you of your illusions, I am neither young nor strong enough to bear your weight.”  


Harry laughed, then grabbed on tighter as Severus made to back away. “No, no. It’s funny,” he said, holding the man in place. “I was just thinking I don’t have the abs for this, either.”  


“Then neither of us is suited to it.” Severus replied, doing that closed-off thing with his face again. Merlin, he was an awkward bastard.  


Harry smiled to put him at ease, which didn’t work. “This being kissing at a weird angle on the back of a motorbike, not kissing each other in general,” he added, just in case Severus meant something different. “Because I’d like to kiss you, generally, a lot more.”  


Though his expression didn’t change, Severus relaxed into Harry’s limpet grip. “I fear I may come to my senses given time.”  


“Not scared I’ll come to mine?” Harry teased.  


Severus’ mouth twitched into a half-smile. “I believe we’ve already ascertained that you haven’t any.”  


-*-  


“This is home,” Harry said nervously, leading Severus from the front door to the cramped kitchen. They were both dripping water onto the tiles, and Harry shivered in his wet clothes. He cast drying and warming charms on himself, felt his hair poof back up into its usual unmanageable curls, and Severus did the same. “Do you want something? I think I swallowed a few insects so I’m just gunna grab some water to wash ‘em down with.”  


“You could have told me so before we-“ Severus cut off, and Harry was made aware of how close they were standing in the miniscule room. “Some water would suit me fine, though I wouldn’t turn down bleach.”  


Harry grinned. “Sure, I think I’ve got some under the sink.” He could smell Severus’ sweat under the bitter scent of potions and sweet rainwater.  


He turned away quickly to open the dishes cupboard, brushing shoulders and almost whacking Severus in the side of the head with the wooden door. “Sorry.” He pulled out two mugs, since there were no glasses. They were probably all being used to hold paint brushes. “Mind the flowers on the table, they’re a bit sharp,” he said, nodding towards the unfinished project on the small table.  


“I think I should wait outside,” Severus murmured, and as he brushed past, he placed a hand momentarily on the back of Harry’s shoulder. That did all sorts of things which Harry had to force down lest he drop the mugs right that second and push Severus against the fridge for a snog.  


When Severus’ footsteps quieted, Harry put the two mugs of water down on the side and then leaned on the counter with both hands. He was exhausted, almost deliriously so, so his will power wasn’t exactly up to its usual level. He wanted to go out there and… and let Severus push him down on the sofa and do a bunch of things Harry had been avoiding thinking about for years. How exactly was he supposed to make that happen, though? Bloody hell, how did a gay man manage to make it to twenty-nine-and-a-half-years-old without even getting close to sex with another man?  


Was it okay to be thinking that far ahead? And was that all he wanted? What exactly was he looking for with Severus? He’d never seen himself as the sort to go for one-night stands, and he doubted he was capable of separating physical and emotional feelings anyway. But this was Severus Snape.  


He laughed suddenly at the absurdity of the situation. A few weeks ago, Severus would have been so far down the list of people he fancied that he got a list all to himself. Absolutely Not People. Well, that had changed quickly.  


One thing was for certain - he wouldn’t get any closer to an answer by standing around in his kitchen. Resolutely, he pulled himself together and grabbed the mugs. He’d just have to work it out. He did half his best work in improv.  


When he stepped out into the living room, Severus was sitting on the edge of the brown armchair. Harry froze. Not because sitting in armchairs was terrifying or bad, but because that particular pose was the sort one might have after slumping into the chair from a big shock. Severus’ expression was open yet unreadable. Wide, frozen eyes.  


Probably because of the sheets of paper in his hands. “Well, this is embarrassing,” Harry said as breezily as he could. He’d been caught with dozens of drawings of the man. It was probably creepy, wasn’t it? Damn, yeah. It was definitely creepy.  


“Embarrassing?” Severus echoed, and his eyes flicked up to meet Harry’s. His expression bled into anger. “ _Embarrassing?_ ”  


Oh, hell. Harry stepped back instinctively, aware that he couldn’t get out his wand with a mug of water in each hand. “Um. Yeah?”  


Severus held up the infirmary drawing in an unnecessarily accusatory manner, then let it drop to the floor and followed it up with another. Some of them were quite unflattering, but hardly so bad to make someone this angry. Harry watched the drawing of Severus being held in the air by his own spell; of killing Albus; meeting Lily; sitting at the pub with a glass hanging loosely in his hand; recoiling from a snake, all falling to the floor. Sluggishly, he realised his mistake.  


The last page fell, and Severus scowled down at the pictures now strewn across the floor. “Where did you- Who told...” he was lost for words, apparently. Severus Snape, lost for words. “You’ve been snooping.”  


“Well, yeah,” Harry answered, for once not sure what face he should be wearing. “That’s what I do. I… I do whatever it takes to make the perfect bike for the client.”  


Severus’ eyes grew even angrier. His shoulders bunched and his stance became rigid. “And here I was, thinking-“ He broke off the sentence, tossing the rest of the papers onto the coffee table. “I should never have come.” He swept towards the door.  


“Wait,” Harry called. He was saying stuff wrong, he knew that. He just had to find the right words, to explain. That Severus wasn’t just a client, that he wasn’t just one more person to be snooped on and psychoanalysed to death so that Harry could feel smug about his work. Severus paused with one hand on the open door, sending Harry back to their first meeting a few weeks ago. Harry’s mind went blank. He had to say something, to make it right, to make him understand. He held up the mugs. “I… brought your water.”  


Severus looked him over with a disdainful sneer. “I desire of nothing from you.” Then he stepped outside and popped away, leaving Harry staring in dismay at the space he’d filled a moment earlier, thinking about every single other bloody thing he should have said instead of _I brought your water_.  


-*-  


_I fucked up. Meet me?  
_

_Harry  
_

_-  
_

_Come to the Burrow for lunch tomoz.  
_

_Gin  
_

_-  
_

_No way, I’ll get eaten alive.  
_

_Harry_  


-*-  


Harry had to accept two hugs from Molly and four comments about how long it’d been since his last visit, before he was allowed to sit down. “Is Gin here yet?” he asked as Molly resumed rushing about from oven to sink to chopping board with dangerous speed.  


“Ginny?” she asked, frowning as she paused on her way from the oven to the chopping board with a roasting tin in her gloved hand. “Ah!” She hurriedly put the tin down and pulled her hand out of the hot glove. “She told me yesterday she couldn’t make it.”  


Bloody- “Right,” he said, trying to sound as if he too had been told this critical fact. “Hard to keep track. Who’s here today, then?” Ginevra Weasley… She would pay for this.  


Molly rattled off the names, along with lengthy explanations for why this or that person could or could not come for lunch. Harry listened politely and tried to remember what he could just in case it was brought up again later, while simultaneously seething at Ginny’s betrayal.  


“Wotcher, Mum. Harry,” George said, loping into the room and saving Harry from a story about Percy’s girlfriend’s nephew having caught some tropical disease while volunteering in Nicaragua. He got dragged into a hug with Molly, then gripped Harry’s shoulder and sat next to him. “Gin-gins told me you’re finally having your midlife crisis, how’s that going?”  


“I’m out,” Harry replied, mainly because he knew everyone must have heard about it by now. “That’s about it, I’m afraid.” As if he was going to talk to Mr George Gossipmonger Weasley about his problems with Severus. He probably already knew somehow anyway - George and Molly were practically mind-readers when it came to ferreting out gossip.  


George flashed his teeth. “No worries, I’m sure the rest will come. Some ill-advised fling with a gorgeous biker baddie to break your heart, eh? It’s about time, if you ask me.”  


“Mind if I help myself to a cup of tea, Molly?” Harry squeaked, getting up quickly. Bloody Weasleys!  


“Oy Mum, I think our Harry’s finally got a crush,” George teased, making Harry feel like a teenager visiting for the holidays again.  


“Oh, do leave him alone George,” she reprimanded, then smiled comfortingly at Harry as she passed him the kettle. “Don’t you mind him, dear. When you’re ready to tell, you’re perfectly welcome to a nice quiet chat with me about it.”  


Ugh. As if he was going to let himself get dragged into another gossip war. Hermione and Ginny were small fry compared to these two. He returned her smile anyway, if only to wind up George. “Thanks, Molly. I appreciate that.”  


He was going to kill Ginny when they next saw one another.  


Percy arrived next, sitting quietly in his customary chair with a book in hand. Even though his time of banishment from the Burrow was long in the past, he still seemed to feel out of place among his family. He carried a book with him everywhere as a shield and excuse not to make small talk. Harry admired the dedication it took to ignore so many Weasleys for so long that they actually left you alone - goodness knew he wished it’d worked for him.  


Molly sent George to fetch “those two” from the shed, and a few minutes later he returned with Arthur and Millicent, covered in grease smudges and chatting like old friends. Molly zapped them with a few cleaning spells as they traipsed inside, and they were too engrossed to notice. It sounded as if Millie was convincing Arthur to put a more powerful engine in the Anglia, make it into some kind of Q-car. Unassuming and original on the outside, but a beast under the hood.  


“Alright?” Harry greeted them as they sat down, and Millie gave him a startled look. At least she wasn’t in on Ginny’s plan to make him suffer.  


“Oh, hey. How’d it go with Snape?” she asked. Harry forced himself not to tense at the name.  


He smiled, ignoring George’s curious grin. “Yeah, fine. I have the man down now-“ he did not blush “-but I still have no idea what bike to use as a base. I’m totally flummoxed.”  


“You’re making a bike for Severus?” Molly asked. She cast a quick accusatory stare at Millicent for not having reported such juicy information to its rightful owner, and George leaned back comfortably to pretend that he knew all along. “Whatever for?”  


“For him to ride, I’d imagine,” Percy piped up from his end of the table, his eyes still locked onto the book in his lap as he fumbled a few roast potatoes onto his plate.  


Harry smothered his grin with a hand. “Uh, yeah. He asked me to. Didn’t you know he rides a motorcycle?” Acting surprise at something Molly didn’t know was one of the best ways to distract her. “I’d have thought you knew lots about him, being members of the Order and all.”  


Molly rallied valiantly by offering everyone the sprouts, and putting them on every plate regardless of the answer she received. “Oh I know plenty about our Severus,” she said. “If you wanted help with your snooping then you should have come to me sooner, Harry.”  


Harry flinched at the same word Severus had used. Couldn’t they all find a nicer word for it? Investigation. Research, even. “Were you friends, then?”  


“Friends?” Molly laughed, and Arthur chuckled along with her. “Goodness me, no. On balance he probably had more good than bad in him, but he was absolutely awful company, wasn’t he?”  


“Miserable, dear,” Arthur responded dutifully.  


“And he’d make you miserable too, just for the inconvenience of existing in the same room as him,” Molly elaborated, and waved a gravy-laden slab of beef at Harry. “Mind you, I’m as grateful as the rest for what he did. Absolutely unimaginable, what he went through during the wars. All I’m saying is I wouldn’t sit in a room with him for ten minutes if you paid me.”  


“I’d last at least an hour,” George added challengingly.  


Harry laughed along because it was expected, while his brain whirred along a different track. A few weeks ago he’d probably have agreed with them, but he knew better now. “He’s not so bad,” he found himself saying. He kept his eyes on his beef as he cut it up into pieces. “I meet him for drinks twice a week, and we usually chat for a few hours.” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but he was sure he could comfortably spend all day with Severus if only the man would let him.  


“Well you’ve always been such a kind boy,” Molly said, breaking a short silence after the declaration. Harry couldn’t remember thinking of himself as kind before. Where in the world did people get these ideas from? “I couldn’t sit there with someone insulting me left, right and centre just for being myself, but there we are. I’m not one to judge.” This statement was contradicted by the airily judgemental tone with which it was delivered.  


The conversation slowly turned to other gossip, and Harry breathed easier. He didn’t mind dishing the gossip on how thick and gullible Heathcote was, or about finding out that a lot of people went to bars with Harry Potter glamours on. In return, George told them the latest Diagon Alley drama and informed them that he was writing a sitcom based on his experiences.  


Harry retreated into his head a little as they finished the meal. Severus was mega pissed off yesterday, and though Harry had stayed calm about it afterwards, he was coming round to seeing the issue. He’d maybe looked into the man’s past a little bit deeper than Severus would have liked, but it’d never been a problem with clients before - then again, he’d never kissed any of them.  


Should he send an owl to explain? Harry wasn’t sure there was anything he could write that would make an impact. He was a nosy guy in general, but he’d only gone so far because of the bike. It was his job. He could apologise for it, but what good was that if they both knew he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong? It wasn’t as though he’d planned to fancy Severus from the start, or he’d never have taken the man on as a client. His feelings started because of the snooping, not the other way around.  


He sighed. Maybe he wasn’t going to be making this bike, after all.  


“Why don’t you take him to see the prince?” Molly asked and, though it wasn’t directed at Harry, it was weird enough a sentence to attract his attention. “He might be able to use it.”  


“The-? Oh, yes. I remember,” Arthur answered, frowning to himself. “Down in the lower barn, I think. Have you seen the prince, Millicent?”  


Millie shrugged. “Not a clue. It’s all junk to me unless it’s got four wheels.”  


“Harry? Why don’t we go take a look?” Arthur asked. He stood up and pulled down his jumper.  


“For what?” Harry said, standing to join him. The house was starting to feel a bit suffocating anyway, so he’d be glad to get out and search for junk in the numerous sheds and barns Arthur had dotted about the place, full of antiques and rubbish collected over the last fifty years or so.  


Arthur smiled at him. “A bike.”  


A bike? No, not just a bike. _A Prince._ Surely not...? “You don’t mean-”  


-*-  


“Oh my God, I can see it,” Harry called excitedly, clambering over the open drawers of an ancient cabinet. One of the drawers snapped shut at his touch, and he shuffled quickly onto a nearby stool before the thing could eat his other hand. He stood up on his toes and peeked again through the gap between some sheets of corrugated iron and a 70s-looking turquoise punch bag.  


The paint was in bad nick, and he could already see some cracks in the fibreglass tub, but there was no mistaking that shape. “Arthur, I like you. I like you a lot, but how dare you not tell me until today that you have a Vincent bloody Black Prince lying around in your barn.”  


“Everything for a reason!” Arthur shouted joyfully in reply. His voice bounced around the cluttered room, echoing at Harry from all angles.  


Harry kept creeping forwards, carefully climbing over furniture and antique toys until he got close enough to lower himself to the ground in the narrow space along the left side of the bike. He rested a hand on it reverently.  


It was perfect. The perfect bike for Severus. What could be better suited to him than a motorbike that looked like it was all covered up in robes? A bike called the Prince, for Merlin’s sake. It was handsome, but not conventionally so. Not in the way Harry usually liked. It was rare and unusual, not quite as fast as the Black Shadow it was based on, but fast enough regardless. Augh, but Harry hated working with fibreglass.  


Damn.  


He was doing this. With or without Severus’ input or request, Harry knew absolutely that he just had to finish this project. It was all coming together in his head, and nothing would stop it now. “What do you want for it?”  


-*-  


Within a minute of opening the jar of the first ingredient, Harry decided to move his new brewing operation out of the living room and into the dilapidated garden shed. Then a few minutes after that, he decided to go back outside and cast the bubblehead charm before continuing.  


It was a bit of an understatement to say that he was rubbish at potions, and it didn’t help that half the ingredients for this particular recipe were slimy, sticky or otherwise strangely textured. It was difficult to finely slice something that gave you shivers just to hold in place. He was doing his absolute very best, though.  


Harry had accosted the photographer in charge of Heathcote’s bike’s magazine shoot, and managed to convince the guy to lend him a top-quality camera for the evening. He’d also dropped hints that he was working on something new, gorgeous and very featurable. Best to get them interested as early as possible. He had the camera set up on a tripod with its feet stuck to the wall, looking down at the potion’s surface ready to capture this beautiful colour of Severus’. All he had to do was survive the process of brewing it.  


After what felt like an eternity of wincing, flinching and shying away from the table as disgust wriggled up his spine, Harry was ready to put the flower bud in. He checked the focus of the camera again, then rolled the bud gently in his palms to warm it up and bring out the colour in the heat-sensitive petals. It went from pale pink to purplish red.  


He consulted the book again. He couldn’t tell if he’d done everything right so far - all the signs of a failed potion were there, from the burnt edges to the congealed, lumpy surface and uneven colour. It looked like everything else Harry had tried to brew in the last decade, but apparently that’s how it was supposed to look. He had his doubts.  


With shaky fingers, Harry placed the bud on the surface and pressed it in. He quickly pulled his fingers away so that they wouldn’t touch the grossness directly, cast the charm and then grabbed his stirring rod and gave it three turns.  


He dropped the rod onto the table and pressed the shutter release cable for the camera, which was charmed to take photos every five seconds for a minute after activation. Then he stood up on his toes to watch without getting in the way.  


For the first five seconds nothing seemed to happen, but then one of the brown lumps began to sizzle and dissolve into the mass, and Harry relaxed his clenched hands. The reddish hue of the flower bud bled out from the middle, but didn’t mix. He was so fixated on watching the fine veins of fuschia spread along the surface that he almost didn’t notice the rest of the potion smoothing out from lumpy brown to deep purple.  


When the camera ka-chick’ed for the twelfth and final time, Harry leaned back.  


It wasn’t the most beautiful colour in all the world, at least not to Harry, but it was damn close. As the reddish veins reached the edges of the cauldron, so did the idea settle into place in his mind.  


“I’m doing this,” he told the cauldron. “I’m doing it.”  


-*-  


“Mate, please tell me you’re not doing this.”  


Harry adjusted the sequence of photographs on his desk, straightening them without looking up at Ron. “I said I would, didn’t I?”  


Ron sighed loudly. “He doesn’t want you to. He doesn’t want the bike.”  


Harry pressed his jaw shut and added his latest sketch to the array. Severus hadn’t shown up at the pub last night, not that Harry had expected him to. He’d prepared a little speech just in case.  


“He doesn’t want Harry, you mean,” Millie added, and Harry looked up sharply. The pair of them stood just inside the door to his office, identical expressions of concern on their faces.  


“He’s being a stubborn idiot,” Harry told them. “If he doesn’t want to listen, then I’ll just have to show him.”  


Ron turned and leaned his forehead against the wall with a groan. “I so don’t want to think about that,” he whined. “Still can’t believe you kissed him.”  


“Yeah yeah, I’m covered in Snape germs now.” Harry replied, then turned appealing eyes on Millicent. “I want him to understand. And I know I should just try talking, but- I… I don’t know, it won’t come out right. I can’t explain this stuff with words.”  


“You’re bloody good at words,” Ron whined into the wall.  


“Not like this,” Harry sighed. “I freeze up just thinking about it. I just know I’ll either come out with a stupid sales pitch, or something totally inane and meaningless. He won’t believe it.”  


“So your only option is to drop thousands of pounds in time and materials into a project he hasn’t approved, which you suspect he never wanted in the first place?” Millicent asked, dashing Harry’s hopes of having her on side with inconvenient facts.  


“I told you this would happen,” Ron said, voice muffled.  


“Sorry?” Harry asked.  


Ron sighed again, then pushed away from the wall. “I told you someone would come along who didn’t appreciate all your nosing about.”  


“Thanks, that’s very useful feedback.” Harry pulled a hand through his hair and leaned on his elbows. Knowing that Ron was right didn’t help him move forwards. “You ever worked with fibreglass before?” he asked Millicent.  


She shrugged. “Not professionally. Done a few repairs here or there,” she answered. Good enough for him - she was the queen of underselling her own talents. “You did promise me some of the winter downtime to bring in the Mini, though…”  


Damn. Yeah, he’d told her she could use the workshop and any materials and tools she liked over the winter period if they didn’t have enough projects on the go. Barring the Snapemobile, they only had one commission in progress and two others coming in next month. “You should still have time for it,” he said, though they both knew that was a lie. The Prince wasn’t in running shape and there was a lot of work to be done on it. “And if not, then I’ll make it up to you.”  


She gave him a shrewd look. “I want a design.”  


“Here we go,” Ron sighed airily.  


“I don’t do cars,” Harry reminded her. It’d been a while since she last asked, and he’d been hoping she’d got the message already.  


“And maybe we’d have more clients if you did,” she argued.  


“We’re _niche_.”  


Millicent leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “I’m not asking you to build it. Just draw me a concept, anything you like, and then I’ll mess about with fibreglass all you like.”  


Harry scratched his head in frustration. A piece of parchment rustled as it twisted under his elbow. “Pretty sure I pay you, so you have to mess about any fibreglass I tell you to anyway.”  


“To the moon,” Ron moaned, putting his hands in front of his eyes and turning about.  


Millicent changed tactics. “C’mon Harry, please? I just want to feel part of it. You’ve got your custom bikes, Ron’s got the Potter original interior. I feel like an extra here. I might as well be a stranger.” Her expression was too open for it to be a lie, though Harry was definitely being manipulated. Her eyes went round as saucers. “I just want to feel part of the team.”  


Harry slumped in his chair. “Ugh, fine,” he said. “But for the record, I resent having my heartstrings pulled.”  


It was difficult to be resentful of anything in the face of Millicent’s wide, excited smile. She rushed to the table and grabbed the design for Snape’s bike. “Keeping it mostly original, yeah? Just repair and restoration, then the colour and these bits here?”  


She said it as if repair and restoration was easy. Harry gently took the paper out of her grasp, and gestured for Ron to join them. “I want you to prioritise the main tub piece while Ron works on the engine. I’ll make the decorational pieces by hand in the meantime, but I need that tub paint-ready as soon as possible.”  


“Bloody hell, Harry,” Ron muttered, pointing to the concept swatch on the side of the page. “You’ll have to do this by hand. You know how long that’ll take?”  


Harry shrugged. That was exactly why he needed the fibreglass pieces sorted first. “We can airspray a base coat, then the underlying texture’s just a bit of sponge and brush splatter. It’s only this last bit that’ll take a while…”  


“ _Days_ ,” Ron said. He frowned at the design, then picked up one of the photographs and held it up beside, and switched his gaze to Harry. “It’ll take you days. You really do like him.”  


“Not like…” Harry shrugged. He wasn’t that sure how serious he was. The bike was a gesture, yes, but it was also just a really cool project on its own. He wanted to make the bike for the sake of doing it. Severus was… extra.  


No, that wasn’t quite right. The bike was cool, yeah, but it’d be on the pile of personal projects out in the yard if not for Severus. Harry wanted him. Badly. This was so absurd. He dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”  


Ron huffed, unsurprised. “Right, well. This is a lot of work. With the other stuff we have going on, and my holiday… Ten weeks?”  


Harry nodded slowly. That’s what he’d figured, too. “So long as we can find any parts we need here.” With their typical luck, he was fully expecting them to have to wait four weeks for some part or other to get shipped from China because it wasn’t made in the UK anymore. “The goal is getting it done by Christmas.”  


“Why not his birthday?” Millicent asked. “That’ll give us a couple extra weeks, and he’ll be staying at Draco’s over Christmas anyway. You’d have to go to Melancholy Mansion to see him.”  


“What a party,” Ron said drily. “Won’t you be over there for Christmas, yourself?”  


Millie laughed. “Salazar, no. It’s awkward central over there - I swear, since the baby was born and Astoria’s condition got worse, he’s forgotten how to talk to humans.”  


Harry dropped his hands. He hadn’t really thought about the why, since he had no recent baseline for Draco’s behaviour, but the man had been a terrible conversationalist last week at dinner. “Is Severus helping with potions and stuff? For her recovery, I mean.”  


Ron incredulously mouthed “ _Severus?_ ”  


Millie winced. “It’s a blood malediction, Harry. There’s no recovery from that, they’re just making her comfortable,” she explained. Harry’s heart stopped. “I know I’m being an awful friend, but the manor reminds me too much of home when my grandmother was ill. She was the only one who…” She shrugged and shook her head, then brightened. “Luckily enough, Molly’s invited me to the Burrow.”  


Ron didn’t have the social graces not to groan at that. “I don’t know how there’ll be space for everyone.”  


“There’s always space,” Harry said. “It’ll be nice to have you there, Mils. Won’t it, Ron?”  


“Yes,” he replied mournfully, then yelped as Harry zapped him with a stinging hex. “Fine, yes. I don’t want you to come back all depressed ‘cause you had to spend the holidays with the bloody Addams family.”  


“Who?” Millie asked.  


Harry smiled. “Ron doesn’t know either, otherwise he’d know that Christmas with them would be awesome.”  


-*-  


_Harry,  
_

_I was content to leave matters between us unspoken, however I believe that a combination of stubbornness and stupidity on your part may possibly manifest in a continued desire to pursue relations with me. To try would do you no good.  
_

_Severus._  


-  


Harry crumpled the letter with a grin. Still on first name basis, then. From Severus, it was as good as an invitation.  


-*-  


_Draco  
_

_You have enough to worry about, so I just thought I’d tell you I haven’t forgotten our after-dinner conversation. The door is still open for him, but I realised I have to redecorate the entire house or he’ll never stay. The prep is gunna take me a couple of months. Don’t let him bad-mouth me too much.  
_

_Mils says you’re an ok guy, so the door’s open for you as well. But not the same door, obviously. No offense.  
_

_Harry  
_

_-  
_

_Potter  
_

_With your rate of Slytherin acquisitions, should I be preparing for Christmas dinner with the weasels?  
_

_Regards,  
_

_Draco Malfoy  
_

_-  
_

_Draco  
_

_Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.  
_

_The Gryffinborg_  


-*-  


The three of them crowded around Millicent’s worktable, which had been cleared, scrubbed and scourgified for the occasion. A pile of fibreglass shards and shavings had been banished, and since the floor was clean they all had their smartest shoes on. Ron held the champagne bottle, Millie the glasses, and Harry the advance copy of _Magical Motor Madness Monthly_. He placed it reverently on the scratched surface in front of them.  


“Go on then,” Ron encouraged him as Harry’s hands faltered.  


_Feature: Winguardian’s Winged Bat for Barbary, page 7._ His company’s name was on the front cover of the world’s coolest motorcycle magazine. The bike itself wasn’t on the cover, which was a shame, but the name was right there in real actual letters. With a nudge from Ron, Harry opened the magazine and flipped to the correct page.  


Even having seen the proofs weeks ago, Harry’s breath caught in his throat. Somehow, that wonderful photographer had managed to capture the best parts of the bike without making it look at all tacky or rubbish. Its wings spread over the two pages like something magnificent. He let his breath escape in a sigh. “Thank Merlin, I was convinced he’d swap it out in revenge for the camera.”  


_What did you do? How did you make all my lenses smell so bad? They’re made of glass, they don’t even absorb smells?!_  


“I can’t believe they made the wings look so good,” Millie said, then glanced sideways at Harry. “Well, I can’t believe I made them look so good, based on your rubbish design.”  


Harry gave her arm a shove, making the glasses rattle in her hand. “You did great,” he confirmed. She grinned, and he was pleased to realise that she’d been doing that a lot more of late.  


Ron popped the cork and Millie pushed Harry aside in a rush to catch the bubbles pouring out. Harry yanked the magazine out of the way.  


“We did it!” Ron roared loudly. “I’m getting an assistant mechanic to boss around!”  


Harry laughed. “Let’s wait until the season starts and see where we are before hiring anyone new, yeah?”  


-*-  


_Potter  
_

_You’re not doing yourself any favours with this long-game nonsense. I can’t say any words starting with the letters H or P in my own home without having my head torn off. That includes ‘holidays’ and ‘happy’, and I can’t even call him a ‘party pooper’ for it.  
_

_Regards,  
_

_Draco  
_

_-  
_

_Draco  
_

_I’m sure you can think of better insults than that.  
_

_Harry_  


-*-  


The tub and a few other parts were finally ready for painting. They were running behind schedule, but so long as they pulled a few all-nighters and didn’t get too hungover at New Years’, they’d likely get everything done on time.  


Despite having initially been excited for the paint job, Harry felt too cold and miserable to want to do it so many weeks after drawing up the design. He hated winter - or more accurately, he hated not being able to ride every day. He wanted to be warm again.  


“It needs more red I think,” he said, tilting the test card towards Ron.  


“Yeah,” Ron agreed, though Harry knew he could have shown him a crimson card and he’d say the same thing. He was here for the break from fiddly engine work, not because he knew the first thing about colours.  


Harry got out a fresh mixing bottle and started pouring in the brown base. “I don’t want to go too red, or we’ll ruin the contrast with the veins later. We’ll do three parts this time; are you writing this all down?”  


“I’m supposed to be writing it down?” Ron asked mockingly.  


He spent an entire afternoon and evening hanging and spraying the parts, then all of the following day texturing with a sponge. The base was a deep aubergine purple, and he layered it up with natural textures of brighter plum and dark chocolate brown. On top of that, he took a fine brush and flicked the occasional patter of tiny iridescent gold droplets.  


When he stepped out of the painting booth, eyes tired and itchy, he was accosted with the most appalling display of festive mirth he’d ever witnessed. “No.” he said, mostly to the Christmas tree in the corner, but also to the tinsel and fake snow and glitter charms that covered every shelf, stray nail and window ledge around the workshop. “Ron!” He bellowed. “Ronald Weasley, you coward, come out here and face me!”  


“This is on you!” Ron called back, and Harry whipped round to find the source of his voice. The front office. Ron and Millie stood to either side of the door, peeping their heads out to look at Harry. “You’re outnumbered, just give in. It’s happening.”  


“Millie! I can’t believe this,” Harry accused. He made another turn about the room, taking in all the cheery, cheesy decorations. “I literally asked in your interview if you’re a fan of Christmas decorations, and you said no. I trusted you!”  


-*-  


The Burrow on Christmas day was hectic. Siblings, niblings, wives, husbands, pets and children clambered over and around one another to get about, and the men had been asked to piss at the bottom of the garden to prevent toilet queues. Every single one of them was wearing a jumper from Molly - mostly red, but a few were yellow or blue, and Millie stood out as the only green in the house. Her jumper was huge, yet it still somehow looked tight around the biceps. Ron was sulking because Hermione had failed to assure him that he looked plenty strong as well, but the mince pies were coming out so he’d cheer up soon.  


Harry did the rounds as quickly as possible, shaking every hand and receiving every hug offered, sharing lightning-fast greetings with distant Weasley cousins he barely knew. Arthur and George had somehow managed to get a full speaker and karaoke system installed in the living room; microphone and everything. The children and Ginny busily snatched the stapled pages of lyrics back and forth out of each others’ hands to boisterously sing Christmas songs out of tune.  


Bill was already tipsy, having probably drunk something from one of the communal bottles or bowls, which Harry avoided because of George’s habit of testing new Wheezes on house guests. Fleur and Hermione stood with Bill, laughing at his attempts to clean up a pink blancmange he’d accidentally tipped onto the floor. Percy was allegedly about, but keeping out of sight until dinner.  


It was a loud jumble, and though he liked to complain, Harry loved it. He loved being part of it. He wished he could go back to visit his child self and assure him that better years were coming - that he was worth more than a 50p coin. That he’d have a real family in his life, and that he deserved it.  


They ate outside in a marquee similar to the one that got wrecked during Bill and Fleur’s wedding, with two long tables Harry was sure must have been nicked from Hogwarts. Professor Longbottom’s presence made that wild theory a bit more likely.  


Harry nabbed himself a seat next to Percy, since they’d both appreciate having at least one angle from which no one could try to converse with them. Millicent joined him next, making this end of the table officially the Outsiders Zone. Not that there were any outsiders really, just people who didn’t have as much social energy as the Weasleys.  


“I wanted to say thanks,” Millicent said.  


Harry unfolded his napkin and put it on his lap. “You already thanked me enough times,” he answered. She’d almost flooded the workshop with tears when he’d given her not only a full design for the mini, but enough credit with their parts supplier that she wouldn’t need to worry about the cost either. Unlike Harry, she had rent to pay on a flat every month, and it might have taken her three years to get the project done otherwise. He’d designed her a cartoonish concept of the mini as a squished-up muscle car. The Mini Muscle.  


“Not that, but now you’ve mentioned it, thanks again.” Millie put a hand down the front of her jumper and pulled out a letter. “I meant for this.”  


Harry took the parchment, confused.  


-  


_Millicent  
_

_I saved your boss’s life, in case he didn’t tell you. You’re welcome. Mum says I’m not to speak with you, and it’s not like we really know each other anyway, but I wanted to say Merry Christmas. You’re alright by me.  
_

_Freddie.  
_

_P.S. that bike you did for the guitarist guy was hideous. When I come for a workshop tour, I’ll be expecting something much cooler._  


-  


Harry’s grin stretched so wide his cheeks hurt. He passed the letter back to Millie, and she shoved it safely into her jumper again. “I’m glad he reached out,” he told her. “He’s not much of a Slytherin though, I think they’ve all gone soft without their head of house. He’ll need a strong guiding hand to get him back on the true serpentine path.”  


Millie smiled wryly. “I reckon they’re a lot happier this way - it’s not that bad, going soft.”  


-*-  


They’d been way too optimistic thinking they’d only need a day to recover from New Year’s. Three days later, Harry barely wanted to move. He hadn’t even made it home from Ron’s house yet, and his glasses were still transfigured into the shape of the year - 2010. Rose had cried when he said he was going to change them back.  


“Coffee?” Hermione asked, leaning over the arm of Harry’s sofa to pick up the remains of his and Rose’s afternoon tea party yesterday. Ron padded quickly across the room behind her, holding the three-year-old Hugo at arm’s length as he peed over the floor.  


“I’ll make it,” Harry said, feeling suddenly like an intrusion on their household. He pushed off his blanket and took the long route to the kitchen to avoid the puddles of wee. He still had that vague unbalanced post-hangover feeling, but he was hydrated now at least. The day before yesterday was hell.  


He put the kettle on and then filled the dishwasher, remembering the battle of wills between Hermione and Molly during its installation. Hermione was a working mother, and didn’t have the time to stand about in the kitchen supervising household charms when there was a muggle appliance that could do the job while she was gone.  


Harry split open a Calgon packet with his teeth and frowned down at the dishwasher, trying to work out where it went, then chucked it in with the dishes and closed the door. He pressed the start button and hoped for the best.  


Rose suddenly appeared and attached herself to his leg, and Harry closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to remember that Hermione and Ron were suffering too - more than he was, because at least he could go home where there were no small children.  


“Mum said you’d make me breakfast,” Rose informed him, looking up with wide, round eyes.  


Harry raised his eyebrows and looked down his nose at her, which had very little effect because she knew perfectly well how adorable she was. “I know she didn’t, because she’d never ask a guest to make the food. But fine, you cheeky little gerbil. Tell uncle Harry what you want and he’ll make it for you.”  


“You smell bad,” she said, then gripped his leg tighter. “I want toast.”  


“Just toast?” he asked, surreptitiously casting an air purifying charm. Toast was easy enough. He picked up his child-laden leg and swung it in a wide arc as he stepped towards the bread bin, making Rose giggle.  


“I want butter on it.”  


So they went on an adventure to the other side of the kitchen to fetch the butter dish, and back to the toaster. Harry’s leg ached. He should probably start going to the gym, or something. Once they were back at the toaster, Rose proclaimed that she would also like jam and so they were off again.  


“Oh, Harry! You didn’t need to do that,” Hermione exclaimed, coming in to see Harry handing the jammy toast down to Rose.  


Harry shrugged. “It’s fine. With George and Ginny, I think you’re all sorted for troublemakers. I’ll try my hand at being a sensible and reliable uncle instead.”  


For some reason, she found that incredibly funny.  


-*-  


“Four days left, what’ve we got?”  


Harry was taking a break from painting because his hand cramps were so bad he could barely hold a brush, and the sight of fuchsia paint made his stomach churn. Millie had finished all of her own tasks for the bike, and was assisting Ron in detailing and reassembly.  


“We’ll be done with this tomorrow so long as nothing else goes wrong,” Ron answered, tapping a spanner against the side of the suspension coil they were installing. Millicent didn’t look up. Her tongue peeked out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on alignment. Ron scratched a hand over the stubble on his cheek, his latest pitiful attempt at growing a beard. “We’re waiting on you, mostly. Once you’re done, we clear coat the lot and then hopefully it’s just finishing touches.”  


“I’m still not sure about the handles,” Millie said, still frowning intently at her work.  


“They’re perfect,” Harry said for the gazillionth time. He’d made them himself at home, and he’d be damned if that time was going to waste. He rubbed his forehead and leaned against the wall, only to jump away as something crinkled under his shoulder. A distorted Santa face smiled up at him. “I’m kidnapping him on Saturday afternoon, so you two had better have these Christmas decorations down by then, or there’ll be murder.”  


“You’re kidnapping Severus Snape,” Ron pointed out. “There’ll be murder either way.”  


-*-  


On the morning of the ninth of January, Harry apparated outside the workshop at 5am. There was no reason to be this early except that he’d been struggling to sleep.  


The tarmac was frosty, glittering under the yellow streetlamps except where his crunching footsteps left dark prints. His breath misted and his nose stung from the cold. Although it hadn’t been snowing, the soft frost dampened sound, giving an eerie edge to the morning silence. He opened the loud garage door just to hear some noise, then switched on the inside lights, which flickered brightly and buzzed. The central heating chugged to life as well, and Harry cast a few warming charms about the place to get it going, as well as a ward to keep out cold air from the open garage door.  


Today was the day. This was happening.  


He’d annoyed Draco into giving him information regarding Severus’ whereabouts and habits, much to the dismay of everyone. Nosiness was what had got him into this trouble in the first place, and so far as they were concerned he couldn’t get out of it with the same trait. But it was necessary information, and if he was being honest he wasn’t likely to change. If Severus was receptive to starting a thing then he’d have to get used to Harry being a nosy prat. And they’d have a chat about boundaries, he supposed. After, and if.  


Apparently Severus was a morning person, usually up and about by six or seven, though he didn’t appreciate company until nine. Pacing in his chilly workshop at five, Harry felt they had that in common. Mornings were a sacred time of peace for getting stuff done before other people were around. He understood that much.  


With that in mind he paced, checked the bike obsessively and read his notes over and over for four hours. He meant to leave at 9:30, but his nerves were starting to get the better of him so he made the snap decision of going at quarter past.  


He checked his reflection in the bathroom one last time. Bobble hat, nice shirt, dark green woolly jumper and a grey scarf. He was wearing the round glasses again, and had gone back and forth over the shiny eyes charm before eventually deciding to keep it. Might as well leave something silly for Severus to pick at - he’d probably enjoy it. Secretly, Harry quite liked the charm.  


He breathed in deeply. Closed his eyes. Breathed out. Opened them. Nodded to his reflection.  


This was it.  


-*-  


Severus wasn’t answering the door.  


Harry looked up and down the street for the millionth time, and was glad it hadn’t begun to snow yet. He rubbed his knees back and forth against each other to warm the denim, and hid his hands in his armpits. Why hadn’t he considered that Severus might not open the door? It was the most predictable thing in the world.  


Harry smiled briefly at a woman walking by with her dog, and stepped onto the doorstep to give her room to pass. The houses on this street were crammed in and the road was narrow, especially with cars parked half on the pavements. The dog sniffed at Harry’s shoes before moving on to an empty packet of crisps. There was a lot of litter about, and the whole street felt dingy. It wasn’t quite as bad as Spinner’s End though. At least not from the outside.  


Half an hour passed, with Harry knocking every five minutes or so. He ground his teeth. He was trying to keep it polite, but at this point he had to assume that Severus was awake, and that he had looked through the door and decided not to answer it. Which meant Harry needed a new plan.  


He knocked again, harder this time. “Hey! Severus Snape!” he shouted loudly. Distorted echoes rang down the street. He swallowed his embarrassment before continuing. “Severus Snape, this is Harry Potter. I have come to serenade you, and if you don’t answer the door I’ll do it right out h-“  


The door disappeared and he was yanked inside.  


“Are you mad?” Severus hissed, slamming the door shut and peering out of the eyehole, his hand still bunched up in Harry’s jumper. “Skeeter’s uncle’s barber lives at number thirteen, half the world will have heard about it by lunchtime.”  


“All the important people already have,” Harry replied, rubbing his cold hands together. “Nice of you to finally invite me in.”  


Severus shoved him away, and Harry balanced himself against a silent grandfather clock. “It is my birthday,” Severus seethed. “The one day I absolutely do not permit the presence of idiots, under any circumstances. Could you not have left me in peace for fourteen and a half more hours?”  


“Happy birthday,” Harry said, smiling. He looked up the dark hallway, but couldn’t see anything of the dark house. The hall was decorated with burgundy floor tiles and dated but clean wallpaper. “I have a present for you, actually. That’s why I’m here. Wanna see?”  


“I do not,” Severus responded confidently. “Solitude is the gift I give myself and you are ruining it, so there is nothing I require from you.”  


Harry took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Agenda,” he informed Severus. “I’m demonstrating the ability to learn.”  


“It will not sway me,” Severus warned, which only assured Harry of the opposite.  


“Do you have a coat?” Harry asked, ignoring him as he scratched his forehead in mock confusion. “Apparently this is the bit where I apparate you to my workshop, but it’s pretty cold there.”  


“I do not need a coat, because I’m not-“  


“Great!” Harry said, then before he could wuss out, he grabbed Severus by the arm and side-along’d him to the workshop, where they were both hit with chilly air.  


Severus batted him away with an angry cry. “You despicable little-“ He stopped, eyes falling on the bike. For almost ten seconds, he stood totally still. Then he clawed a hand over his mouth. “You bastard.”  


Harry let out the breath he’d been holding and stepped up to the bike. It was breathtakingly perfect. “I know, right? I mean, I knew I was a genius of design but sometimes I impress even myself.”  


“Is blowing your own horn on that agenda of yours?” Severus asked, still rooted to the spot. At least his mouth still worked.  


Harry checked the paper and grimaced. “Uh, no. I was supposed to say something self-deprecating there. Never mind. Do you like it?”  


Severus walked up to the bike, keeping his distance from Harry. “I didn’t ask for it.”  


“I know. I made it because I wanted to. For you.”  


Severus touched the unit that held the speedometer, next to the new logo Harry had hand-painted. Instead of “Black Prince”, it read “Half-blood Prince” in golden lettering. Keeping the aesthetic while reducing the text size had been tricky, but Harry was pleased with the result.  


“You brewed the Queen’s Tincture,” Severus murmured, moving his hand down to the gas tank which had a small enamel-painted flower on top. Fuchsia veins spread out from it, down the sides of the tub and up towards the handlebars and front fender. Harry’s hand ached again just looking at it.  


“I still can’t open the door to my shed because of the smell. Tempted to incendio the place,” Harry replied. He found himself clutching the agenda hard, pulse racing. He’d imagined that giving Severus the bike would somehow clear the air between them, but now that they were here he could see all the flaws his friends had pointed out. “I wanted to understand you. Not… not just for the bike, but for you know… _You._ ” Merlin, why was it so difficult to read a few words off a page? He was starting to feel sick. He blinked several times, trying to bring the writing into focus. “I always snoop around when it comes to clients, but once I realised how I felt about you I should have stopped and come clean. I’m sorr-“  


“Did you paint it by hand?” Severus asked, cutting over him as if he hadn’t been listening at all.  


Harry nodded jerkily. “Yeah. Apart from the aubergine base and the clear coat on top, it was all me. My hand, I mean,” he clarified, holding up his hand. “Ron got the engine going and Millicent fixed up the bodywork.”  


Severus looked up sharply. “Bulstrode?”  


Harry nodded again. “I assumed you knew. We’re... friends. She does all the fabrication work, sometimes upholstery as well. I sat next to her at Christmas dinner. Drew up a design for her mini, and her cousin saved-“ He realised he was rambling, and snapped his jaw closed with an apologetic smile. He glanced down at the agenda again, but they were already too far off track. He didn’t know which point to read from.  


“The handlebars… I thought that Poppy must have told you, but..?” Severus hesitantly brushed a finger over the grips.  


They were inlaid with coiling silver snakes, which Harry had spent many long nights making. Not that physically making parts was unusual. They never used transfiguration at Winguardians, valuing long-term stability over convenience.  


Harry had a paragraph prepared about the snakes, and he nervously scanned the agenda for it. “Sorry, um. It’s here somewhere…” he muttered. “Ah. You’re probably wondering about the snakes. Hagrid and Madam Pomfrey both told me that you’re scared of them now, uh, not to dob them in, so you’d probably think that knowing this information, I’d never put snakes on a bike meant for you. Except all they did was tell me a fact, and even true facts don’t always reflect the full truth. You can’t understand someone through learning lots of facts about them. You do that through empathy and, and spending time with them. Getting to know them.”  


He stopped, frowning down at the paper in his hands, but it didn’t feel right. None of this felt right, it was too scripted. Bloody agenda, he knew it was a bad idea. He ploughed on anyway. “I did some snooping, more than you’d like, and found out you’re frightened of snakes - which you’d never have wanted me to know. But then I thought about what I know of you, who you are, and I realised you’re not someone who runs away from their fears. When something’s got a hold over you, you get a hold right back and you carry on. So that’s why I- uh, sorry, this bit’s a bit smudged, I think it says…”  


Severus took the page and pulled it slowly out of Harry’s grip. “I was wrong,” he said, drawing Harry’s eyes up to meet his own. “Please refrain from writing agendas in the future. This is even worse than your usual rambling.”  


“But I even wrote you a poem,” Harry argued faintly. “I mean, I tried to. It’s more of a… freeform kind of, prose? I thought because of the poems in your book, you like that sort of...”  


After a shocked pause, Severus dropped his gaze to the page, scanned it then turned the paper over. The stupid, annoying, worthless poem was on the back. Harry fought the urge to incendio it in the man’s hands. He didn’t have to read the thing to remember the words though. They were burnt into his brain after all the staring and editing he’d done.  


-  


_Alone.  
_ _I was doing just fine on my own  
_ _No plans on making a change  
_ _Happily forever alone  
_ _Until I found another page  
_ _From the same book  
_ _And look  
_ _Maybe you don’t want to hear this  
_ _But I really didn’t ask to feel this:  
_ _‘This’ meaning something  
_ _Vaguely between nothing  
_ _And absolutely everything  
_ _So I was wondering  
_ _Instead of being altogether alone  
_ _If you’d rather be alone together?_  
-  


There was no feeling quite like watching someone read a poem he’d written, secretly intending for it never to be seen or heard. Harry recited it three times in his head before Severus stopped frowning at the page and started frowning at his face instead. “I am too old for you.”  


Blindsided, Harry blinked. Severus was trying to persuade him out of it… No, he was persuading himself. Which meant there was hope. “I don’t care,” Harry replied quickly.  


“I don’t become any more pleasant with time,” Severus argued.  


Harry straightened his posture and stepped closer. “Neither do I. I don’t care”  


“You should,” Severus said. He held the agenda between them like a shield.  


Harry gently pulled it away and dropped it onto the floor. “Are you not going to call me out on my horrible poetry writing skills?” he asked.  


“I’ve read worse,” Severus replied, and they were close enough now that Harry could hear him even though he was barely speaking above a whisper.  


Harry smiled, tilting his head to the side. “Don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to bump the grade?”  


“A four-foot essay on the use of rhythm in poetry and literature. Phillip Larkin is mandatory reading.”  


“I’m coming on to you Severus, stop ruining it and just kiss me already.” Harry laughed, and ran a hand down Severus’ robes. “You can read me some Phillip Larkin poems afterwards if you like.”  


“You are incorrigible,” Severus sighed.  


Harry pulled him closer. “I’ll even read books, if you want me to,” he said, sliding a hand round the back of Severus’ neck. Long hair tickled the back of his fingers.  


Severus placed his own hands on Harry’s shoulders, but still seemed uncertain if he was going to push Harry away or draw him in. Harry stood still, tried giving his most endearing look. Severus’ grip tightened and he turned his head away with a second sigh, looking towards the bike again. “I have a very good intuition for knowing when I’m making a terrible mistake. I felt it when I took the mark, and many times since. I feel it now.”  


Harry’s stomach dropped, though he couldn’t say he was surprised. He pulled back his hand and forced a smile. “Well, if we’re being that honest then I should tell you I was lying about reading books.” He stepped back, out of Severus’ grip. “The bike’s yours. It wasn’t contingent on you saying yes or anything, just… It’s a gift. Happy Birthday.”  


Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, the same way he had that first day in the front office. “Harry-“  


“Don’t.” Harry said. “It’s fine, really. I’m not-“  


“Harry.” Severus dropped his hand, and Harry found his gaze drawn to the man’s eyes. They were somehow both sharp and soft. “Knowing that I am making a mistake, and using that knowledge to avoid making it, are two quite separate things I assure you. I haven’t learnt my lesson so far, and at the age of fifty I hardly think that I shall.”  


Harry laughed. “I don’t know what to address first: the fact you compared going out with me to becoming a death eater, or that you admitted an inability to learn something.”  


“Taking the mark changed everything. It was the point at which I decided not to go through life alone,” Severus argued. “Admittedly, it was in retrospect not the best idea to spend it instead with a group of homicidal blood-purists.”  


“I’ll be a walk in the park by comparison, right?” Harry asked. He wanted to close the gap between them but found his confidence wavering.  


“I sincerely doubt it,” Severus replied, then solved Harry’s problem by pulling him into an embrace. “I have the feeling that you’ll be entirely too much trouble. A menace.”  


Harry pushed back the hair to either side of Severus’ face, and held his head between his hands. He grinned. “Too right,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

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